“Do Hyacinth’s job? Because it’s better to do my own.”
“And pray what is your own?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul Muniment with perfect equanimity. “I expect to be instructed.”
“Have you taken an oath like Hyacinth?”
“Ah madam, the oaths I take I don’t tell,” he gravely returned.
“Oh you——!” she breathed with a deep ambiguous cadence. She appeared to dismiss the question, but to suggest at the same time that he was very abnormal. This imputation was further conveyed by the next words she uttered. “And can you see a dear friend whirled away like that?”
At this, for the first time, her visitor showed impatience. “You had better leave my dear friend to me.”
The Princess, her eyes still fixed on him, gave a long, soft sigh. “Well then, shall we go?”
He took up his hat again, but made no movement toward the door. “If you did me the honour to seek my acquaintance, to ask me to come and see you, only in order to say what you’ve just said about Hyacinth, perhaps we needn’t carry out the form of going to the place you proposed. Wasn’t this only your pretext?”
“I believe you are afraid!” she frankly returned; but in spite of her exclamation the pair presently went out of the house. They quitted the door together, after having stood on the step a little to look up and down, apparently for a cab. So far as the darkness, which was now complete, permitted the prospect to be scanned, there was no such vehicle within hail. They turned to the left and after a walk of several minutes, during which they were engaged in small dull by-streets, emerged on a more populous way, where they found lighted shops and omnibuses and the evident chance of a hansom. Here they stayed afresh and very soon an empty hansom passed and, at a sign, pulled up near them. Meanwhile, it should be recorded, they had been followed, at an interval, by a cautious figure, a person who, in Madeira Crescent, when they came out of the house, was stationed on the other side of the street, at a considerable distance. On their appearing he had retreated a little, still, however, keeping them in sight. When they moved away he had moved in the same direction, watching them but maintaining his distance. He had drawn nearer, seemingly because he couldn’t control his eagerness, as they passed into Westbourne Grove, and during the minute they stood there had been exposed to recognition by the Princess should she have happened to turn her head. In the event of her having felt such an impulse she would have discovered, in the lamplight, that her noble husband was hovering in her rear. But she was otherwise occupied; she failed to see that at one moment he came so close as to suggest an intention of breaking out on her from behind. The reader scarce need be informed, nevertheless, that his design was but to satisfy himself as to the kind of person his wife was walking with. The time allowed him for this research was brief, especially as he had perceived, more rapidly than he sometimes perceived things, that they were looking for a vehicle and that with its assistance they would pass out of his range—a reflexion which caused him to give half his attention to the business of hailing any second cab that should come that way. There are parts of London in which you may never see a cab at all, but there are none in which you may see only one; in accordance with which fortunate truth Prince Casamassima was able to wave his stick to good purpose as soon as the two objects of his pursuit had rattled away. Behind them now, in the gloom, he had no fear of being seen. In little more than an instant he had jumped into another hansom, the driver of which accompanied the usual exclamation of “All right, sir!” with a small, amused grunt, regarded by the Prince as eminently British, after he had hissed at him, over the hood, expressively and in a manner by no means indicative of that nationality, the injunction, “Follow, follow, follow!”