Hyacinth glanced at Madame Grandoni, but that worthy woman was engaged in a survey of the house, through an old-fashioned eye-glass with a long gilt handle. He had perceived, long before this, that the Princess Casamassima had no desire for vain phrases, and he had the good taste to feel that, from himself to such a personage, compliments, even if he had wished to pay them, would have had no suitability. “I don’t know whether he would be willing to come. He’s the sort of man that, in such a case, you can’t answer for.”
“That makes me want to know him all the more. But you’ll come yourself, at all events, eh?”
Poor Hyacinth murmured something about the unexpected honour; for, after all, he had a French heredity, and it was not so easy for him to make unadorned speeches. But Madame Grandoni, laying down her eye-glass, almost took the words out of his mouth, with the cheerful exhortation, “Go and see her—go and see her once or twice. She will treat you like an angel.”
“You must think me very peculiar,” the Princess remarked, sadly.
“I don’t know what I think. It will take a good while.”
“I wish I could make you trust me—inspire you with confidence,” she went on. “I don’t mean only you, personally, but others who think as you do. You would find I would go with you—pretty far. I was answering just now for Captain Sholto; but who in the world is to answer for me?” And her sadness merged itself in a smile which appeared to Hyacinth extraordinarily magnanimous and touching.
“Not I, my dear, I promise you!” her ancient companion ejaculated, with a laugh which made the people in the stalls look up at the box.
Her mirth was contagious; it gave Hyacinth the audacity to say to her, “I would trust you, if you did!” though he felt, the next minute, that this was even a more familiar speech than if he had said he wouldn’t trust her.
“It comes, then, to the same thing,” the Princess went on. “She would not show herself with me in public if I were not respectable. If you knew more about me you would understand what has led me to turn my attention to the great social question. It is a long story, and the details wouldn’t interest you; but perhaps some day, if we have more talk, you will put yourself a little in my place. I am very serious, you know; I am not amusing myself with peeping and running away. I am convinced that we are living in a fool’s paradise, that the ground is heaving under our feet.”
“It’s not the ground, my dear; it’s you that are turning somersaults,” Madame Grandoni interposed.