“Perhaps then you wouldn’t have given away your life. You might have seen reasons for keeping it.” With which, like Hyacinth, she sacrificed to the brighter bravery. He replied that he had not the least doubt that on the whole her influence was relaxing; but without heeding this she went on: “Be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not afraid of you, but I’ll give you no names,” said Hyacinth; and he related what had happened at the place known to him in Bloomsbury and during that night of which I have given some account. The Princess listened intently while they strolled under the budding trees with a more interrupted step. Never had the old oaks and beeches, renewing themselves in the sunshine as they did to-day or naked in some grey November, witnessed such an extraordinary series of confidences since the first pair that sought isolation wandered over the grassy slopes and ferny dells beneath them. Among other things our young man mentioned that he didn’t go to the “Sun and Moon” any more; he now perceived, what he ought to have perceived long before, that this particular temple of their faith, with everything that pretended to get hatched there, was a hopeless sham. He had been a rare muff from the first to take it seriously. He had done so mainly because a friend of his in whom he had confidence appeared to set him the example; but now it turned out that this friend (it was Paul Muniment again by the way) had always thought the men who went there a pack of shufflers and was trying them only to try everything. There was nobody you could begin to call a first-rate man, putting aside another friend of his, a Frenchman named Poupin—and Poupin was magnificent but wasn’t first-rate. Hyacinth had a standard now that he had seen a man who was the very incarnation of a strong plan. You felt him a big chap the very moment you came into his presence.
“Into whose presence, Mr. Robinson?” the Princess demanded.
“I don’t know that I ought to tell you, much as I believe in you! I’m speaking of the extraordinary man with whom I entered into that engagement.”
“To give away your life?”
“To do something that in a certain contingency he’ll require of me. He’ll require my poor little carcass.”
“Those ‘strong’ plans have a way of failing—unfortunately,” the Princess murmured, adding the last word more quickly.
“Is that a consolation or a regret?” Hyacinth asked. “This one shan’t fail—so far as depends on me. They wanted an obliging young man. Well, the place was vacant and I stepped in.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re right. We must pay for all we do.” She noted this hard law calmly and coldly and then said: “I think I know the person in whose power you’ve placed yourself.”
“Possibly, but I doubt it.”