“How do you know, then?”
The Princess hesitated again. “Oh, I’m like Rosy—I find out. Mr Vetch, as I suppose you are aware, has known Hyacinth all his life; he takes a most affectionate interest in him. He believes there is something hanging over him, and he wants it to be turned off, to be stopped.” The Princess paused at this, but her visitor made no response, and she continued: “He was going to see you, to beg you to do something, to interfere; he seemed to think that your power, in such a matter, would be very great; but, as I tell you, I requested him, as a particular favour to me, to let you alone.”
“What favour would it be to you?” Muniment asked.
“It would give me the satisfaction of feeling that you were not worried.”
Muniment appeared struck with the curious inadequacy of this explanation, considering what was at stake; he broke into a laugh and remarked, “That was considerate of you, beyond everything.”
“It was not meant as consideration for you; it was a piece of calculation.” The Princess, having made this announcement, gathered up her gloves and turned away, walking to the chimney-piece, where she stood a moment arranging her bonnet-ribbons in the mirror with which it was decorated. Muniment watched her with evident curiosity; in spite both of his inaccessibility to nervous agitation and of the sceptical theories he entertained about her, he was not proof against her general faculty of creating a feeling of suspense, a tension of interest, on the part of those who associated with her. He followed her movements, but plainly he didn’t follow her calculations, so that he could only listen more attentively when she inquired suddenly, “Do you know why I asked you to come and see me? Do you know why I went to see your sister? It was all a plan,” said the Princess.
“We hoped it was just an ordinary humane, social impulse,” the young man returned.
“It was humane, it was even social, but it was not ordinary. I wanted to save Hyacinth.”
“To save him?”
“I wanted to be able to talk with you just as I am talking now.”