So Captain Sholto delivered himself, with the highest naturalness and plausibility, and Hyacinth, listening, felt that he himself ought perhaps to resent the idea of being served up for the entertainment of imperious triflers, but that somehow he didn’t, and that it was more worthy of the part he aspired to play in life to meet such occasions calmly and urbanely than to take the trouble of dodging and going roundabout. Of course the lady in the box couldn’t be sincere; she might think she was, though even that was questionable; but you couldn’t really care for the cause that was exemplified in the little back-room in Bloomsbury if you came to the theatre in that style. It was Captain Sholto’s style as well, but it had been by no means clear to Hyacinth hitherto that he really cared. All the same, this was no time for going into the question of the lady’s sincerity, and at the end of sixty seconds our young man had made up his mind that he could afford to humour her. None the less, I must add, the whole proposal continued to make things dance, to appear fictive, delusive; so that it sounded, in comparison, like a note of reality when Millicent, who had been looking from one of the men to the other, exclaimed—
“That’s all very well, but who is to look after me?” Her assumption of the majestic had broken down, and this was the cry of nature.
Nothing could have been pleasanter and more indulgent of her alarm than the manner in which Captain Sholto reassured her: “My dear young lady, can you suppose I have been unmindful of that? I have been hoping that after I have taken down our friend and introduced him you would allow me to come back and, in his absence, occupy his seat.”
Hyacinth was preoccupied with the idea of meeting the most remarkable woman in Europe; but at this juncture he looked at Millicent Henning with some curiosity. She rose to the situation, and replied, “I am much obliged to you, but I don’t know who you are.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you all about that!” the Captain exclaimed, benevolently.
“Of course I should introduce you,” said Hyacinth, and he mentioned to Miss Henning the name of his distinguished acquaintance.
“In the army?” the young lady inquired, as if she must have every guarantee of social position.
“Yes—not in the navy! I have left the army, but it always sticks to one.”
“Mr Robinson, is it your intention to leave me?” Millicent asked, in a tone of the highest propriety.
Hyacinth’s imagination had taken such a flight that the idea of what he owed to the beautiful girl who had placed herself under his care for the evening had somehow effaced itself. Her words put it before him in a manner that threw him quickly and consciously back upon his honour; yet there was something in the way she uttered them that made him look at her harder still before he replied, “Oh dear, no, of course it would never do. I must defer to some other occasion the honour of making the acquaintance of your friend,” he added, to Captain Sholto.