“I’ll go with you if it will give you pleasure,” said Schinkel very obligingly to Hyacinth.
“Then you’ll give me that letter, the sealed one, first!” Madame Poupin, erecting herself, declared to the German.
“My wife, you’re bien sotte!” Poupin groaned, lifting his hands and shoulders and turning away.
“I may be anything you like, but I won’t be a party—no, God help me, not to that!” the good woman protested, planted before Schinkel as to prevent his moving.
“If you’ve a letter for me you ought to give it to me, hang you!” said Hyacinth to Schinkel. “You’ve no right to give it to any one else.”
“I’ll bring it to you in your house, my good friend,” Schinkel replied with a vain, public wink which seemed to urge how Madame Poupin must be considered.
“Oh in his house—I’ll go to his house!” this lady cried. “I regard you, I’ve always regarded you, as my child,” she continued to Hyacinth, “and if this isn’t an occasion for a mother——!”
“It’s you who are making it an occasion. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hyacinth. He had been questioning Schinkel’s face and believed he found in it a queer, convulsed but honest appeal to depend on him. “I’ve disturbed you and I think I had better go away.”
Poupin had turned round again; he seized the young man’s arm eagerly, as to prevent his retiring without taking in his false position. “How can you care when you know everything’s changed?”
“What do you mean—everything’s changed?”