“Che vuole? Don’t trouble yourself; it won’t be for long!”
Madame Grandoni saw that this comforting assurance was lost upon him; his face was turned to the door of the room, which had been thrown open, and all his attention was given to the person who crossed the threshold. Madame Grandoni transferred her own to the same quarter, and recognised the little artisan whom Christina had, in a manner so extraordinary and so profoundly characteristic, drawn into her box that night at the theatre, and whom she had since told her old friend she had sent for to come and see her.
“Mr Robinson!” the butler, who had had a lesson, announced in a loud, colourless tone.
“It won’t be for long,” Madame Grandoni repeated, for the Prince’s benefit; but it was to Mr Robinson the words had the air of being addressed.
He stood there while Madame Grandoni signalled to the servant to leave the door open and wait, looking from the queer old lady, who was as queer as before, to the tall foreign gentleman (he recognised his foreignness at a glance), whose eyes seemed to challenge him, to devour him; wondering whether he had made some mistake, and needing to remind himself that he had the Princess’s note in his pocket, with the day and hour as clear as her magnificent handwriting could make them.
“Good-morning, good-morning. I hope you are well,” said Madame Grandoni, with quick friendliness, but turning her back upon him at the same time, to ask of the Prince, in Italian, as she extended her hand, “And do you not leave London soon—in a day or two?”
The Prince made no answer; he still scrutinised the little bookbinder from head to foot, as if he were wondering who the deuce he could be. His eyes seemed to Hyacinth to search for the small neat bundle he ought to have had under his arm, and without which he was incomplete. To the reader, however, it may be confided that, dressed more carefully than he had ever been in his life before, stamped with that extraordinary transformation which the British Sunday often operates in the person of the wage-earning cockney, with his handsome head uncovered and suppressed excitement in his brilliant little face, the young man from Lomax Place might have passed for anything rather than a carrier of parcels. “The Princess wrote to me, madam, to come and see her,” he remarked, as a precaution, in case he should have incurred the reproach of bad taste, or at least of precipitation.
“Oh yes, I dare say.” And Madame Grandoni guided the Prince to the door, with an expression of the hope that he would have a comfortable journey back to Italy.
A faint flush had come into his face; he appeared to have satisfied himself on the subject of Mr Robinson. “I must see you once more—I must—it’s impossible!”
“Ah, well, not in this house, you know.”