“I know who you are—I know who you are,” said the Princess, though she could easily see that he knew she did.
“I wonder whether you also know why I have come to see you,” Mr Vetch replied, presenting the top of his hat to her as if it were a looking-glass.
“No, but it doesn’t matter. I am very glad; you might even have come before.” Then the Princess added, with her characteristic honesty, “Don’t you know of the great interest I have taken in your nephew?”
“In my nephew? Yes, my young friend Robinson. It is in regard to him that I have ventured to intrude upon you.”
The Princess had been on the point of pushing a chair toward him, but she stopped in the act, staring, with a smile. “Ah, I hope you haven’t come to ask me to give him up!”
“On the contrary—on the contrary!” the old man rejoined, lifting his hand expressively, and with his head on one side, as if he were holding his violin.
“How do you mean, on the contrary?” the Princess demanded, after he had seated himself and she had sunk into her former place. As if that might sound contradictious, she went on: “Surely he hasn’t any fear that I shall cease to be a good friend to him?”
“I don’t know what he fears; I don’t know what he hopes,” said Mr Vetch, looking at her now with a face in which she could see there was something more tonic than old-fashioned politeness. “It will be difficult to tell you, but at least I must try. Properly speaking, I suppose, it’s no business of mine, as I am not a blood-relation to the boy; but I have known him since he was an urchin, and I can’t help saying that I thank you for your great kindness to him.”
“All the same, I don’t think you like it,” the Princess remarked. “To me it oughtn’t to be difficult to say anything.”
“He has told me very little about you; he doesn’t know I have taken this step,” the fiddler said, turning his eyes about the room, and letting them rest on Madame Grandoni.