The maid-servant brought in the tea, and while the Princess was making a place for it on a little table beside her she exclaimed, “Well, I don’t care, for I think I have you in my power!”
“You have every one in your power,” returned Muniment.
“Every one is no one,” the Princess replied, rather dryly; and a moment later she said to him, “That extraordinary little sister of yours—surely you take her seriously?”
“I’m wonderful fond of her, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t think her position will ever be altered.”
“Are you alluding to her position in bed? If you consider that she will never recover her health,” the Princess said, “I am very sorry to hear it.”
“Oh, her health will do. I mean that she will continue to be, like all the most amiable women, just a kind of ornament to life.”
The Princess had already perceived that he pronounced amiable ‘emiable’; but she had accepted this peculiarity of her visitor in the spirit of imaginative transfigurement in which she had accepted several others. “To your life, of course. She can hardly be said to be an ornament to her own.”
“Her life and mine are all one.”
“She is certainly magnificent,” said the Princess. While he was drinking his tea she remarked to him that for a revolutionist he was certainly most extraordinary; and he inquired, in answer, whether it were not rather in keeping for revolutionists to be extraordinary. He drank three cups, declaring that his hostess’s decoction was fine; it was better, even, than Lady Aurora’s. This led him to observe, as he put down his third cup, looking round the room again, lovingly, almost covetously, “You’ve got everything so handy, I don’t see what interest you can have.”
“How do you mean, what interest?”