It would perhaps be inquiring too closely to consider whether this reference to sources of consolation other than those that sprang from her own bosom had an irritating effect on Milly; she at all events answered it by presently saying: “Does she know—your trumpery Princess?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t mind it.”
“That’s most uncommonly kind of her!” cried the girl with a scornful laugh.
“It annoys me very much,” he interposed—though still with detachment—“to hear you apply invidious epithets to her. You know nothing about her.”
“How do you know what I know, please?” She asked this question with the habit of her natural pugnacity, but the next instant she dropped her voice as in remembrance of the appeal made by a great misfortune. “Hasn’t she treated you most shamefully, and you such a regular dear?”
“Not in the least. It is I who, as you may say, have rounded on her. She made my acquaintance because I was interested in the same things as herself. Her interest has continued, has increased, but mine, for some reason or other, has declined. She has been consistent and I’ve been beastly fickle.”
“Your interest in the Princess has declined?” Millicent questioned, following imperfectly this somewhat complicated statement.
“Oh dear, no. I mean only in some opinions I used to hold.” And he might have been speaking of “shaky” shares, to a considerable amount, of which he had at a given moment shrewdly directed his broker to relieve him.
“Ay, when you thought everything should go to the lowest! That’s a good job!”—and Miss Henning’s laugh suggested that, after all, Hyacinth’s views and the changes in his views were not what was most important. “And your grand lady still goes in for the costermongers?”
“She wants to take hold of the great question of material misery; she wants to do something to make that misery less. I don’t care for her means, I don’t like her processes. But when I think of what there is to be done, and of the courage and devotion of those who set themselves to do it, it seems to me sometimes that with my reserves and scruples I’m a very poor creature.”