“And I hope you’re industrious, and temperate in all ways and—what do you call it in English?—steady.”
“I don’t think I’m very wild,” said Hyacinth without offence. He thought the old woman patronising, but he forgave her.
“I don’t know how one speaks in this country to young men like you. Perhaps one’s considered meddling or impertinent.”
“I like the way you speak,” Hyacinth hastened to profess.
She stared, and then with a comical affectation of dignity: “You’re very good. I’m glad it amuses you. You’re evidently intelligent and clever,” she went on, “and if you’re disappointed it will be a pity.”
“How do you mean if I’m disappointed?”
“Well, I daresay you expect great things when you come into a house like this. You must tell me if I upset you. I’m very old-fashioned and I’m not of this country. I speak as one speaks to young men like you in other places.”
“I’m not so easily upset!” Hyacinth assured her with a flight of imagination. “To expect anything one must know something, one must understand: isn’t it so? And I’m here without knowing, without understanding. I’ve come only because a lady who seems to me very beautiful and very kind has done me the honour to send for me.”
Madame Grandoni examined him a moment as if struck by his good looks, by something delicate stamped on him everywhere. “I can see you’re very clever, very intelligent; no, you’re not like the young men I mean. All the more reason—!” And she paused, giving a short sigh. Her case might have been all too difficult. “I want to warn you a little, and I don’t know how. If you were a young Roman it would be different.”
“A young Roman?”