“She has a tremendous desire to meet some one who looks at the whole business from your standpoint, don’t you see? And in her position she scarcely ever has a chance, she doesn’t come across them—to her great annoyance. So when I spotted you to-night she immediately declared I must introduce you at any cost. I hope you don’t mind just for a quarter of an hour. I ought perhaps to tell you that she’s a person used to having nothing refused her. ‘Go up and bring him down,’ you know, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. She’s really very much in earnest: I don’t mean about wishing to see you—that goes without saying—but about our whole job, yours and mine. Then I should add—it doesn’t spoil anything—that she’s the most charming woman in the world, simply! Honestly, my dear boy, she’s perhaps the most remarkable woman in Europe.”
So Captain Sholto delivered himself, with the highest naturalness and plausibility, and Hyacinth, listening, felt that he himself ought perhaps to resent the idea of being served up for the entertainment of capricious not to say presumptuous triflers, but that somehow he didn’t, and that it was more worthy of the part he aspired to play in life to meet such occasions calmly and urbanely than to take the trouble of avoidance. Of course the lady in the box couldn’t be sincere; she might think she was, though even that was questionable; but you didn’t really care for the cause exemplified in the guarded back room in Bloomsbury when you came to the theatre in that style. It was Captain Sholto’s style as well, but it had been by no means clear to Hyacinth hitherto that he really cared. All the same this was no time for going into the question of the lady’s sincerity, and at the end of sixty seconds our young man had made up his mind that he could afford to indulge her. None the less, I must add, the whole proposal continued to make things dance, to appear fictive and phantasmagoric; so that it sounded in comparison like a note of reality when Millicent, who had been turning from one of the men to the other, exclaimed—
“That’s all very well, but who’s to look after me?” Her assumption of the majestic had broken down and this was the cry of nature.
Nothing could have been pleasanter and more charitable to her alarm than the manner in which Captain Sholto reassured her. “My dear young lady, can you suppose I’ve been unmindful of that? I’ve been hoping that after I’ve taken down our friend and introduced him you might allow me to come back and in his absence occupy his seat.”
Hyacinth was preoccupied with the idea of meeting the most remarkable woman in Europe; but at this juncture he looked at Millicent Henning with some curiosity. She rose grandly to the occasion. “I’m much obliged to you, but I don’t know who you are.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you all about that!” the Captain benevolently cried.
“Of course I should introduce you,” said Hyacinth, and he mentioned to Miss Henning the name of his distinguished acquaintance.
“In the army?” the young lady inquired as if she must have every guarantee of social position.
“Yes—not in the navy! I’ve left the army, but it always sticks to one.”
“Mr. Robinson, is it your intention to leave me?” Millicent asked in a tone of the highest propriety.