“Why, then, do you ask me?”
“Because I am not sure, I don’t think she knows. I want to know more, to be sure of what is done in that house. Does she go there only for the revolution,” the Prince demanded, “or does she go there to be alone with him?”
“With him?” The Prince’s tone and his excited eyes infused a kind of vividness into the suggestion.
“With the tall man—the chemist. They got into a hansom together; the house is far away, in the lost quarters.”
Hyacinth drew himself together. “I know nothing about the matter, and I don’t care. If that is all you wish to ask me, we had better separate.”
The Prince’s face elongated; it seemed to grow paler. “Then it is not true that you hate those abominations!”
Hyacinth hesitated a moment. “How can you know about my opinions? How can they interest you?”
The Prince looked at him with sick eyes; he raised his arms a moment, a certain distance, and then let them drop at his sides. “I hoped you would help me.”
“When we are in trouble we can’t help each other much!” our young man exclaimed. But this austere reflection was lost upon the Prince, who at the moment Hyacinth spoke had already turned to look in the direction from which they had proceeded, the other end of the Crescent, his attention apparently being called thither by the sound of a rapid hansom. The place was still and empty, and the wheels of this vehicle reverberated. The Prince peered at it through the darkness, and in an instant he cried, under his breath, excitedly, “They have come back—they have come back! Now you can see—yes, the two!” The hansom had slackened pace and pulled up; the house before which it stopped was clearly the house the two men had lately quitted. Hyacinth felt his arm seized by the Prince, who, hastily, by a strong effort, drew him forward several yards. At this moment a part of the agitation that possessed the unhappy Italian seemed to pass into his own blood; a wave of anxiety rushed through him—anxiety as to the relations of the two persons who had descended from the cab; he had, in short, for several instants, a very exact revelation of the state of feeling of a jealous husband. If he had been told, half an hour before, that he was capable of surreptitious peepings, in the interest of such jealousy, he would have resented the insult; yet he allowed himself to be checked by his companion just at the nearest point at which they might safely consider the proceedings of the couple who alighted. It was in fact the Princess, accompanied by Paul Muniment. Hyacinth noticed that the latter paid the cabman, who immediately drove away, from his own pocket. He stood with the Princess for some minutes at the door of the house—minutes during which Hyacinth felt his heart beat insanely, ignobly, he couldn’t tell why.
“What does he say? what does she say?” hissed the Prince; and when he demanded, the next moment, “Will he go in again, or will he go away?” our sensitive youth felt that a voice was given to his own most eager thought. The pair were talking together, with rapid sequences, and as the door had not yet been opened it was clear that, to prolong the conversation on the steps, the Princess delayed to ring. “It will make three, four, hours he has been with her,” moaned the Prince.