“Unfortunately yes! If it hadn’t been for me he wouldn’t have known Poupin, and if he hadn’t known Poupin he wouldn’t have known his chemical friend—what’s his name?—Muniment.”
“And has that done him harm, do you think?” the Princess asked. She had risen to her feet.
“Surely: that deep fellow has been the main source of his infection.”
“I lose patience with you!” she made answer, turning away.
And indeed her visitor’s persistence was irritating. He went on, lingering, his head thrust forward and his short arms, out at his sides, terminating in his hat and umbrella, which he held grotesquely and as if intended for emphasis or illustration: “I’ve supposed for a long time that it was either Muniment or you who had got him into his scrape. It was you I suspected most—much most; but if it isn’t you it must be he.”
“You had better go to him then!”
“Of course I’ll go to him. I scarcely know him—I’ve seen him but once—but I’ll speak my mind.”
The Princess rang for her maid to usher Mr. Vetch out, but at the moment he laid his hand on the door of the room she checked him with a quick gesture. “Now that I think of it don’t go, please, to Mr. Muniment. It will be better to leave him quiet. Leave him to me,” she added with a softer smile.
“Why not, why not?” he pleaded. And as she couldn’t tell him on the instant why not he asked: “Doesn’t he know?”
“No, he doesn’t know; he has nothing to do with it.” She suddenly found herself desiring to protect Paul Muniment from the imputation that was in Mr. Vetch’s mind—the imputation of an ugly responsibility; and though she was not a person who took the trouble to tell fibs this repudiation on his behalf issued from her lips before she could stay it. It was a result of the same desire, though also an inconsequence, that she added: “Don’t do that—you’ll spoil everything!” She went to him suddenly eager, she herself opened the door for him. “Leave him to me—leave him to me,” she continued persuasively, while the fiddler, gazing at her, dazzled and submissive, allowed himself to be wafted away. A thought that excited her had come to her with a bound, and after she had heard the house-door close behind Mr. Vetch she walked up and down the room half an hour, all restlessly, under possession of it.