“Certainly, I will go with you,” said Hyacinth. He spoke with an instinctive stiffness, in spite of the Prince’s queer affability, and in spite also of the fact that he felt sorry for the nobleman, to whose countenance Madame Grandoni’s last injunction, uttered in English, had brought a deep and painful blush. It is needless to go into the question of what Hyacinth, face to face with an aggrieved husband, may have had on his conscience, but he assumed, naturally enough, that the situation might be grave, though indeed the Prince’s manner was, for the moment, incongruously conciliatory. Hyacinth invited his new acquaintance to pass, and in a minute they were in the street together.
“Do you go here—do you go there?” the Prince inquired, as they stood a moment before the house. “If you will permit, I will take the same direction.” On Hyacinth’s answering that it was indifferent to him the Prince said, turning to the right, “Well, then, here, but slowly, if that pleases you, and only a little way.” His English was far from perfect, but his errors were mainly errors of pronunciation, and Hyacinth was struck with his effort to express himself very distinctly, so that in intercourse with a little representative of the British populace his foreignness should not put him at a disadvantage. Quick as he was to perceive and appreciate, Hyacinth noted how a certain quality of breeding that was in his companion enabled him to compass that coolness, and he mentally applauded his success in a difficult feat. Difficult he judged it because it seemed to him that the purpose for which the Prince wished to speak to him was one which must require a deal of explanation, and it was a sign of training to explain adequately, in a foreign tongue, especially if one were agitated, to a person in a social position very different from one’s own. Hyacinth knew what the Prince’s estimate of his importance must be (he could have no illusions as to the character of the people his wife received); but while he heard him carefully put one word after the other he was able to smile to himself at his needless precautions. Hyacinth reflected that at a pinch he could have encountered him in his own tongue; during his stay at Venice he had picked up an Italian vocabulary. “With Madame Grandoni I spoke of you,” the Prince announced, dispassionately, as they walked along. “She told me a thing that interested me,” he added; “that is why I walk with you.” Hyacinth said nothing, deeming that better by silence than in any other fashion he held himself at the disposal of his interlocutor. “She told me you have changed—you have no more the same opinions.”
“The same opinions?”
“About the arrangement of society. You desire no more the assassination of the rich.”
“I never desired any such thing!” said Hyacinth, indignantly.
“Oh, if you have changed, you can confess,” the Prince rejoined, in an encouraging tone. “It is very good for some people to be rich. It would not be right for all to be poor.”
“It would be pleasant if all could be rich,” Hyacinth suggested.
“Yes, but not by stealing and shooting.”
“No, not by stealing and shooting. I never desired that.”
“Ah, no doubt she was mistaken. But to-day you think we must have patience,” the Prince went on, as if he hoped very much that Hyacinth would allow this valuable conviction to be attributed to him. “That is also my view.”