“What favour would it be to you?” Muniment asked.
“It would give me the satisfaction of feeling you not worried.”
He appeared struck with the curious inadequacy of this explanation, considering what was at stake; so that he confessed to almost rude amusement. “That was considerate of you beyond everything.”
“It was not meant as consideration for you; it was a piece of calculation.” Having made this statement the Princess gathered up her gloves and turned away, walking to the chimney-piece, where she stood arranging her bonnet-ribbons in the mirror with which it was decorated. Paul watched her with clear curiosity; in spite both of his inaccessibility to nervous agitation and of the general scepticism he had cultivated about her he was not proof against her faculty of creating a feeling of suspense, a tension of interest, on the part of those involved with her. He followed her movements, but plainly didn’t follow her calculations, so that he could only listen more attentively when she brought out suddenly: “Do you know why I asked you to come and see me? Do you know why I went to see your sister? It was all a plan,” said the Princess.
“We hoped it was just an ordinary, humane, social impulse,” the young man returned.
“It was humane, it was even social, but it was not ordinary. I wanted to save Hyacinth.”
“To save him?”
“I wanted to be able to talk with you just as I’m talking now.”
“That was a fine idea!” Paul candidly cried.
“I’ve an exceeding, a quite inexpressible regard for him. I’ve no patience with some of his opinions, and that’s why I permitted myself to say just now that he’s silly. But after all the opinions of our friends are not what we love them for—so I don’t see why they should be a ground of aversion. Robinson’s nature is singularly generous and his intelligence very fine, though there are things he muddles up. You just now expressed strongly your own interest in him; therefore we ought to be perfectly agreed. Agreed I mean about getting him out of his scrape.”