“In earnest—in terrible deadly earnest, my dear fellow! I think she must be rather crowded out at home.”
“Crowded out of Inglefield? Why, there’s room for three hundred!” Rosy broke in.
“Well, if that’s the kind of mob that’s in possession, no wonder she prefers Camberwell. We must be kind to the poor lady,” Paul added in a tone that Hyacinth noticed. He attributed a remarkable meaning to it; it seemed to say that people such as he were now so sure of their game that they could afford to be magnanimous; or else it expressed a prevision of the doom that hung over her ladyship’s head. Muniment asked if Hyacinth and Rosy had got on together, and the girl replied that Mr. Robinson had made himself most agreeable. “Then you must tell me all about him after he goes, for you know I don’t know him much myself,” said her brother.
“Oh yes, I’ll tell you everything—you know how I like describing.”
Hyacinth found himself amused at the young lady’s account of his efforts to please her, the fact being that he had only listened to her own eager discourse without opening his mouth; but Paul, whether or no guessing the truth, said to him all pertinently: “It’s very wonderful—she can describe things she has never seen. And they’re just like the reality.”
“There’s nothing I’ve never seen,” Rosy declared. “That’s the advantage of my lying here in such a manner. I see everything in the world.”
“You don’t seem to see your brother’s meetings—his secret societies and his revolutionary clubs. You put that aside when I asked you.”
“Oh, you mustn’t ask her that sort of thing,” said Paul, lowering at Hyacinth with a fierce frown—an expression he perceived in a moment to be facetiously assumed.
“What am I to do then, since you won’t tell me anything definite yourself?”
“It will be definite enough when you get hanged for it!” Rosy exclaimed mockingly.