“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.
Hyacinth stood, while she 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 if 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 script could make them.
“Good-morning, good-morning. I hope you’re well,” said Madame Grandoni with quick friendliness, but turning her back upon him at the same time in order to ask of their companion, in the other idiom, as she extended her hand: “And don’t you leave London soon—in a day or two?”
The Prince made no answer; he still scanned the little bookbinder from head to foot, as if 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 the heat of wonder in his fine 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 said as a prompt precaution; in case he should have incurred the reproach of undue precipitation.
“Oh yes, I daresay.” And Madame Grandoni guided the Prince to the door with an expression of the desire he might have a comfortable journey back to Italy.
But he stood stiff there; he appeared to have jumped to a dark conclusion about Mr. Robinson. “I must see you once more. I must. It’s impossible—!”
“Ah well, not in this house, you know.”
“Will you do me the honour to meet me then?” And as the old lady hesitated he added with sudden intensity: “Dearest friend, I beg you on my knees!” After she had agreed that if he would write to her proposing a day and place she would see him were it possible, he raised her ancient knuckles to his lips and, without further notice of Hyacinth, turned away. She bade the servant announce the other visitor to the Princess, and then approached Mr. Robinson, rubbing her hands and smiling, her head very much to one side. He smiled back at her vaguely; he didn’t know what she might be going to say. What she said was, to his surprise—
“My poor young man, may I take the liberty of asking your age?”
“Certainly, madam; I’m twenty-four.”