“Precisely. I know what you’ll probably do.”
“Oh this time I shouldn’t come back!” the old lady declared. “The scandal’s too great. It’s intolerable. But my danger’s of making it worse.”
“Dear Madame Grandoni, you can’t make it worse and you can’t make it better,” Sholto returned as he seated himself on the sofa beside her. “In point of fact no idea of scandal can possibly attach itself to our friend. She’s above and outside all such considerations, such dangers. She carries everything off; she heeds so little, she cares so little. Besides, she has one great strength—she does no wrong.”
“Pray what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come and live with her?”
“Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon who the lady is and what she is.”
“She had better take care of one thing first,” cried Madame Grandoni—“that she shall not have been separated, with a hundred stories, from her husband!”
“The Princess can carry off even that. It’s unusual, it’s eccentric, it’s fantastic if you will, but it isn’t necessarily wicked. From her own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her opinions.”
“Her opinions are perversity itself.”
“What does it matter,” asked Sholto, “if they keep her quiet?”
“Quiet! Do you call this quiet?”