Solution Manual for Introduction to Wireless and

Mobile
Systems 4th Edition Agrawal Zeng
1305087135
9781305087
132
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Chapter 2: Probability, Statistics, and Traffic Theories

P2.1. A random number generator produces numbers between 1 and 99. If the current
value of the random variable is 45, then what is the probability that the next
randomly generated value for the same random variable, will also be 45.
Explain clearly.

[Solution]
Let the random variable be X such that 1 X  99 .
Current value of .
Since the value of generation of random numbers is independent of the previous
generation, the probability of generating 45 again is the same as for the first
time. Hence,
1
P ( X = 45) = .
99

P2.2. A random digit generator on a computer is activated three times consecutively

to simulate a random three-digit number.
(a) How many random three-digit numbers are possible?
(b) How many numbers will begin with the digit 2?
(c) How many numbers will end with the digit 9?
(d) How many numbers will begin with the digit 2 and end with the digit 9?
(e) What is the probability that a randomly formed number ends with 9 given
that it begins with a 2?
[Solution]
(a) 900
(b) 100
(c) 90
(d) 10
(e) 1/10

P2.3. A snapshot of the traffic pattern in a cell with 10 users of a wireless system is
given as follows:
 User Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Call Initiation Time 0 2 0 3 1 7 4 2 5 1
Call Holding Time 5 7 4 8 6 2 1 4 3 2

(a) Assuming the call setup/connection and call disconnection time to be zero,
what is the average duration of a call?
(b) What is the minimum number of channels required to support this
sequence of calls?
(c) Show the allocation of channels to different users for part (b) of the
Problem.
(d) Given the number of channels obtained in part (b), for what fraction of
time are the channels utilized?

5
©2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 2: Probability, Statistics, and Traffic Theories

[Solution]
(a) Average duration of a call is
5 +7 +4 +8 +6 +2 +1 +4 +3 +2
= 4.2.
10
(b) By plotting the number of calls by all users, we can determine how many
users need to have a channel simultaneously. This gives us the minimum
number of channels required to support the sequence of calls as 6.
(c) Allocation of channels to various users is
Channel number 1 2 3 4 5 6
User number 1 3 5 10 2 8
User number (allocated to same channel) 9 7 4 6

(d) Total duration of the calls is 42.

Total amount of time channels are available is 116 = 66 .
42
Therefore fraction of time channels are used is = 0.6363 .
66

P2.4. A department survey found that 4 of 10 graduate students use CDMA cell phone
service. If 3 graduate students are selected at random, what is the probability
that 3 graduate students use CDMA cell phones?
[Solution]
C43 2
3
= = 0.0333.
C10 60

P2.5. There are three red balls and seven white balls in box A, and six red balls and
four white balls in box B. After throwing a die, if the number on the die is 1 or
6, then pick a ball from box A. Otherwise, if any other number appears (i.e., 2,
3, 4, or 5), then pick a ball from box B. Selected ball has to put it back before
proceeding further. Answer the followings:
(a) What is the probability that the selected ball is red?
(b) What is the probability a white ball is picked up in two successive
selections?

[Solution]
(a) Probability of selecting the box × probability of selecting a red ball is equal
to
2 3 4 6
=    = 0.5.
6 10 6 10
(b) Since we are replacing the balls, the occurrence of two successive white
balls is independent.
Thus probability of picking two white balls in succession is equal to
 2 7 4 4  2 7 4 4  1
=  +   +  = = 0.25.
 6 10 6 10  6 10 6 10  4
  

6
©2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Chapter 2: Probability, Statistics, and Traffic Theories

P2.6. Consider an experiment consisting of tossing two true dice. Let X, Y, and Z be the
numbers shown on the first die, the second die, and total of both dice,
respectively. Find P (X ≤ 1, Z ≤ 2) and P (X ≤ 1) P (Z ≤ 2) to show that X and Y
are not independent.

[Solution]
1
P ( X  1, Z  1) =  0.02778.
36
1 1
P ( X  1) P ( Z  1) =  = 0.00463
6 36
Since P (X ≤ 1, Z ≤ 1) and P (X ≤ 1) P (Z ≤ 1) are not equal, they are not
independent.

P2.7. The following table shows the density of the random variable X.
x 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
p(x) 0.03 0.01 0.04 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.07 ?

(a) Find p(8)

(b) Find the table for CDF F(x)
(c) Find P(3 ≤ X ≤ 5)
(d) Find P(X ≤ 4) and P(X < 4). Are the probabilities the same?
(e) Find F(−3) and F(10)

[Solution]
(a) p(8) = 0.15

x 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
p(x) 0.03 0.01 0.04 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.07 0.15

(b) F(x) is given by

x 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
p(x) 0.03 0.04 0.08 0.38 0.68 0.78 0.85 1.0

(c) P (3 ≤ X ≤ 5) = 0.04 + 0.3 + 0.3 = 0.68

(d) P(X ≤ 4) = 0.38 and P(X < 4) = 0.08
Thus they are not equal.
(e) F(−3) = 0 and F(10) = 1

P2.8. The density for X is given in the table of Problem 7.

(a) Find E[X]
(b) Find E[X2]
(c) Find Var[X]
(d) Find the standard deviation for X.

7
©2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter 2: Probability, Statistics, and Traffic Theories

[Solution]
(a)
E  X  = 1  0.03 + 2  0.01 + 3  0.04 + 4  0.3 + 5  0.3 + 6  0.1

+ 7  0.07 + 8  0.15

= 5.16.
8
(b) E X 2 =  x p ( x ) = 29.36.
2

x=1
(c) Var[X] = 2.7344.
(d) Standard deviation = 1.65.

P2.9. Find the probability when

(a) k = 2 and λ = 0.01 for Poisson distribution.
(b) p = 0.01 and k = 2 for geometric distribution.
(c) Repeat (b) when binomial distribution is used and n = 10.
[Solution]
 k e− 
(a) pk = , when k = 2, λ = 0.01, Probability = 0.0000495025.
k!
(b) pk = p(1-p)k, when k = 2, λ = 0.01, Probability = 0.0000495025.
k 
(c) pk =   p k (1− p ) when n = 10,k = 2,  = 0.01, Probability =
n−k

n

0.00415235.

P2.10. Find the distribution function of the maximum of a finite set of independent
random variables {X1, X2, ..., Xn}, where Xi has distribution function FX i . What
1
is this distribution when Xi is exponential with a mean of .
i
[Solution]
Y = max  X 1 , X 2 , , X n
P (Y  y ) = P ( max  X 1 , X 2 , y)
, X n 
= P ( X 1  y, X 2  y, , X n  y)
n
=  P ( Xi  y)
i=1
n
=  FX i ( y ).
i=1
1
When Xi is exponential with mean ,
i
FX i ( y ) = 1− e− i y .

8
©2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Princess Casamassima
(Volume 2 of 2)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
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Title: The Princess Casamassima (Volume 2 of 2)

Author: Henry James

Release date: December 24, 2022 [eBook #69629]

Language: English

Original publication: uk: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1921

Credits: Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA (VOLUME 2 OF 2) ***
 Transcriber’s Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original

document have been preserved. Obvious typographical
errors have been corrected.

THE PRINCESS
CASAMASSIMA

MACMILLAN AND CO., L

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, L .
TORONTO

THE PRINCESS
CASAMASSIMA
BY

HENRY JAMES

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1921

COPYRIGHT
First published in 1886
 BOOK THIRD
XXII

Hyacinth got up early—an operation attended with very little effort,

as he had scarce closed his eyes all night. What he saw from his window
made him dress as quickly as a young man might who desired more than
ever that his appearance shouldn’t give strange ideas about him: an old
garden with parterres in curious figures and little intervals of lawn that
seemed to our hero’s cockney vision fantastically green. At one end of
the garden was a parapet of mossy brick which looked down on the other
side into a canal, a moat, a quaint old pond (he hardly knew what to call
it) and from the same standpoint showed a considerable part of the main
body of the house—Hyacinth’s room belonging to a wing that
commanded the extensive irregular back—which was richly grey
wherever clear of the ivy and the other dense creepers, and everywhere
infinitely a picture: with a high-piled ancient russet roof broken by huge
chimneys and queer peep-holes and all manner of odd gables and
windows on different lines, with all manner of antique patches and
protrusions and with a particularly fascinating architectural excrescence
where a wonderful clock-face was lodged, a clock-face covered with
gilding and blazonry but showing many traces of the years and the
weather. He had never in his life been in the country—the real country,
as he called it, the country which was not the mere ravelled fringe of
London—and there entered through his open casement the breath of a
world enchantingly new and after his recent feverish hours unspeakably
refreshing; a sense of sweet sunny air and mingled odours, all strangely
pure and agreeable, and of a musical silence that consisted for the greater
part of the voices of many birds. There were tall quiet trees near by and
afar off and everywhere; and the group of objects that greeted his eyes
evidently formed only a corner of larger spaces and of a more
complicated scene. There was a world to be revealed to him: it lay
waiting with the dew on it under his windows, and he must go down and
take of it such possession as he might.

On his arrival at ten o’clock the night before he had only got the
impression of a mile-long stretch of park, after turning in at a gate; of the
cracking of gravel under the wheels of the fly and of the glow of several
windows, suggesting indoor cheer, in a front that lifted a range of vague
grand effects into the starlight. It was much of a relief to him then to be
informed that the Princess, in consideration of the lateness of the hour,
begged to be excused till the morrow: the delay would give him time to
recover his balance and look about him. This latter opportunity was
offered first as he sat at supper in a vast high hall with the butler, whose
acquaintance he had made in South Street, behind his chair. He had not
exactly wondered how he should be treated: too blank for that his
conception of the way in which, at a country-house, invidious
distinctions might be made and shades of importance marked; but it was
plain the best had been ordered for him. He was at all events abundantly
content with his reception and more and more excited by it. The repast
was delicate—though his other senses were so awake that hunger
dropped out and he ate, as it were, without eating—and the grave
automatic servant filled his glass with a liquor that reminded him of
some lines of Keats in the “Ode to a Nightingale.” He wondered if he
should hear a nightingale at Medley (he was vague about the seasons of
this vocalist) and also if the butler would attempt to talk to him, had
ideas about him, knew or suspected who he was and what: which after all
there was no reason for his doing save perhaps the aspect of the scant
luggage attending the visitor from Lomax Place. Mr. Withers, however
(it was this name Hyacinth heard used by the driver of his fly), had given
no further symptom of sociability than to ask him at what time he would
be called in the morning; to which our young man replied that he
preferred not to be called at all—he would get up by himself. The butler
rejoined, “Very good, sir,” while Hyacinth thought it probable he puzzled
him a good deal and even considered the question of giving him a
precautionary glimpse of an identity that might be later on less
fortunately betrayed. The object of this diplomacy was that he should not
be oppressed and embarrassed with attentions to which he was unused;
but the idea came to nothing for the simple reason that before he spoke
he found himself liking what he had feared. His impulse to deprecate
services departed, he was already aware there were none he should care
to miss or was not quite prepared for. He knew he had probably thanked
Mr. Withers too much, but he couldn’t help this—it was an irrepressible
tendency and an error he should doubtless always commit.

He had lain in a bed constituted in a manner so perfect to ensure rest

that it was naturally responsible in some degree for his want of ease, and
in a large high room where long dressing-glasses emitted ghostly glances
even after the light was extinguished. Suspended on the walls were many
prints, mezzotints and old engravings which he supposed, possibly
without reason, to be of the finest and rarest. He got up several times in
the night, lighted his candle and walked about looking at them. He
looked at himself in one of the long glasses, and in a place where
everything was on such a scale it seemed to him more than ever that
Mademoiselle Vivier’s son, lacking all the social dimensions, was scarce
a perceptible person at all. As he came downstairs he encountered
housemaids with dusters and brooms, or perceived them through open
doors on their knees before fireplaces; and it was his belief that they
regarded him more boldly than if he had been a guest of the usual kind.
Such a reflexion as that, however, ceased to trouble him after he had
passed out of doors and begun to roam through the park, into which he
let himself loose at first, and then, in narrowing circles, through the
nearer grounds. He rambled an hour in breathless ecstasy, brushing the
dew from the deep fern and bracken and the rich borders of the garden,
tasting the fragrant air and stopping everywhere, in murmuring rapture,
at the touch of some exquisite impression. His whole walk was peopled
with recognitions; he had been dreaming all his life of just such a place
and such objects, such a morning and such a chance. It was the last of
April and everything was fresh and vivid; the great trees, in the early air,
were a blur of tender shoots. Round the admirable house he revolved
repeatedly, catching every aspect and feeling every value, feasting on the
whole expression and wondering if the Princess would observe his
proceedings from a window and if they would be offensive to her. The
house was not hers, but only hired for three months, and it could flatter
no princely pride that he should be struck with it. There was something
in the way the grey walls rose from the green lawn that brought tears to
his eyes; the spectacle of long duration unassociated with some sordid
infirmity or poverty was new to him; he had lived with people among
whom old age meant for the most part a grudged and degraded survival.
In the favoured resistance of Medley was a serenity of success, an
accumulation of dignity and honour.

A footman sought him out in the garden to tell him breakfast was
served. He had never thought of breakfast, and as he walked back to the
house attended by the inscrutable flunkey this offer appeared a free
extravagant gift, unexpected and romantic. He found he was to breakfast
alone and asked no questions, but when he had finished the butler came
in to say that the Princess would see him after luncheon but that in the
meanwhile she wished him to understand the library to be all at his
service. “After luncheon”—that threw the hour he had come for very far
into the future, and it caused him some bewilderment that she should
think it worth while to invite him to stay with her from Saturday evening
to Monday morning only to let so much of his visit elapse without their
meeting. But he felt neither slighted nor impatient; the impressions
already crowding on him were in themselves a sufficient reward, and
what could one do better precisely in such a house as that than wait for a
wonderful lady? Mr. Withers conducted him to the library and left him
planted in the middle of it and staring at the treasures he quickly and
widely took in. It was an old brown room of great extent—even the
ceiling was brown, though there were figures in it dimly gilt—where row
upon row of finely-lettered backs consciously appealed for recognition.
A fire of logs crackled in a great chimney, and there were alcoves with
deep window-seats, and arm-chairs such as he had never seen, luxurious,
leather-covered, with an adjustment for holding one’s volume; and a vast
writing-table before one of the windows, furnished with a perfect
magazine of paper and pens, inkstands and blotters, seals, stamps,
candlesticks, reels of twine, paper-weights, book-knives. He had never
imagined so many aids to correspondence and before he turned away had
written a note to Millicent in a hand even nobler than usual—his
penmanship was very minute, but at the same time wonderfully free and
fair—largely for the pleasure of seeing “Medley Hall” stamped in
heraldic-looking red characters at the top of his paper. In the course of an
hour he had ravaged the collection, taken down almost every book,
wishing he could keep it a week, and then put it back as quickly as his
eye caught the next, which glowed with a sharper challenge. He came
upon rare bindings and extracted precious hints—hints by which he felt
himself perfectly capable of profiting. Altogether his vision of true
happiness at this moment was that for a month or two he should be
locked into the treasure-house of Medley. He forgot the outer world and
the morning waned—the beautiful vernal Sunday—while he lingered
there.

He was on the top of a ladder when he heard a voice remark, “I’m

afraid they’re very dusty; in this house, you know, it’s the dust of
centuries,” and, looking down, saw Madame Grandoni posted in the
middle of the room. He instantly prepared to descend and greet her, but
she exclaimed: “Stay, stay, if you’re not giddy; we can talk from here! I
only came in to show you we are in the house and to tell you to keep up
your patience. The Princess will probably see you in a few hours.”

“I really hope so,” he returned from his perch, rather dismayed at the
“probably.”

“Natürlich,” said the old lady; “but people have come sometimes
and gone away without seeing her. It all depends on her mood.”

“Do you mean even when she has sent for them?”

“Oh, who can tell whether she has sent for them or not?”

“But she sent for me, you know,” Hyacinth declared, staring down
and struck with the odd effect of Madame Grandoni’s wig in that bird’s-
eye view.

“Oh yes, she sent for you, poor young man!” The old lady looked up
at him with a smile and they communicated a little in silence. Then she
added: “Captain Sholto has come like that more than once and has gone
away no better off.”

“Captain Sholto?” Hyacinth repeated.

“Very true, if we talk at this distance I must shut the door.” She
retraced her course while he watched her, and pushed it to, then
advanced into the room again with her superannuated, shuffling step,
walking as if her shoes were too big for her. Hyacinth, moreover,
descended the ladder. “There it is. She’s a capricciosa.”

“I don’t understand how you speak of her,” Hyacinth remarked

gravely. “You seem her friend, yet you say things not favourable to her.”

“Dear young man, I say much worse to her about herself than I
should ever say to you. I’m rude, oh yes—even to you, to whom, no
doubt, I ought to be particularly kind. But I’m not false. That’s not our
German nature. You’ll hear me some day. I am the friend of the Princess;
it would be well enough if she never had a worse one! But I should like
to be yours too—what will you have? Perhaps it’s of no use. At any rate
here you are.”

“Yes, here I am decidedly!” Hyacinth uneasily laughed.

“And how long shall you stay? Pardon me if I ask that; it’s part of
my rudeness.”

“I shall stay till to-morrow morning. I must be at my work by noon.”

“That will do very well. Don’t you remember, the other time, how I
told you to remain faithful?”

“That was very good advice. But I think you exaggerate my danger.”

“So much the better,” said Madame Grandoni; “though now that I
look at you well I doubt it a little. I see you’re one of those types that
ladies like. I can be sure of that—I like you myself. At my age—a
hundred and twenty—can’t I say that? If the Princess were to do so it
would be different; remember that—that any flattery she may ever offer
you will be on her lips much less discreet. But perhaps she will never
have the chance; you may never come again. There are people who have
come only once. Vedremo bene. I must tell you that I’m not in the least
against a young man’s taking a holiday, a little quiet recreation, once in a
while,” Madame Grandoni continued in her disconnected, discursive,
confidential way. “In Rome they take one every five days; that’s no
doubt too often. In Germany less often. In this country I can’t understand
if it’s an increase of effort: the English Sunday’s so difficult! This one
will in any case have been beautiful for you. Be happy, make yourself
comfortable; but go home to-morrow!” And with this injunction
Madame Grandoni took her way again to the door while he went to open
it for her. “I can say that because it’s not my house. I’m only here like
you. And sometimes I think I also shall go to-morrow!”

“I imagine you’ve not, like me, your living to get every day. That’s
reason enough for me,” said Hyacinth.

She paused in the doorway with her expressive, ugly, kindly little
eyes on his face. “I believe I’m nearly as poor as you. And I’ve not, like
you, the appearance of nobility. Yet I’m noble,” said the old lady,
shaking her wig.

“And I’m not!” Hyacinth deeply smiled.

“It’s better not to be lifted up high like our friend. It doesn’t give
happiness.”

“Not to one’s self possibly; but to others!” From where they stood he
looked out into the great panelled and decorated hall, lighted from above
and roofed with a far-away dim fresco, and the reflexion of this grandeur
came into his appreciative eyes.

“Do you admire everything here very much—do you receive great
pleasure?” asked Madame Grandoni.

“Oh, so much—so much!”

She considered him a moment longer. “Poverino!” she murmured as

she turned away.
 A couple of hours later the Princess sent for him and he was
conducted upstairs, through corridors carpeted with crimson and hung
with pictures, and ushered into a large bright saloon which he afterwards
learned that his hostess used as a boudoir. The sound of music had come
to him outside the door, so that he was prepared to find her seated at the
piano, if not to see her continue to play after he appeared. Her face was
turned in the direction from which he entered, and she smiled at him
without lifting her hands from the keys while the servant, as if he had
just arrived, formally pronounced his name. The room, placed in an
angle of the house and lighted from two sides, was large and sunny,
upholstered in fresh gay chintz, furnished with all sorts of sofas and low
familiar seats and convenient little tables, most of these holding great
bowls of early flowers; littered over with books, newspapers, magazines,
photographs of celebrities slashed across by signatures, and full of the
marks of luxurious and rather indolent habitation. Hyacinth stood there,
not advancing very far, and the Princess, still playing and smiling,
nodded toward a seat near the piano. “Put yourself there and listen to
me.” He did so and she played a long time without glancing at him. This
left him the more free to rest his eyes on her own face and person while
she looked about the room, vaguely, absently, but with an expression of
quiet happiness, as if lost in her music, soothed and pacified by it. A
window near her was half-open and the soft clearness of the day and all
the odour of the spring diffused themselves and made the place cheerful
and pure. The Princess struck him as extraordinarily young and fair, and
she seemed so slim and simple, and so friendly too, in spite of having
neither abandoned her occupation nor offered him her hand, that he at
last sank back in his seat with the sense that all his uneasiness, his
nervous tension, was leaving him, and that he was safe in her kindness,
in the free original way with which she evidently would always treat
him. This peculiar manner, half consideration, half fellowship, seemed to
him to have already so mild and wise an intention. She played ever so
movingly, with different pieces succeeding each other; he had never
listened to music nor to a talent of that order. Two or three times she
turned her eyes on him, and then they shone with the wonderful
expression which was the essence of her beauty; that profuse mingled
light which seemed to belong to some everlasting summer and yet to
suggest seasons that were past and gone, some experience that was only
an exquisite memory. She asked him if he cared for music and then
added, laughing, that she ought to have made sure of this before; while
he answered—he had already told her so in South Street, but she
appeared to have forgotten—that he was awfully fond of it.

The sense of the beauty of women had been given to our young man
in a high degree; it was a faculty that made him conscious to adoration of
all the forces of that power and depths of that mystery; of every element
of loveliness, every delicacy of feature, every shade and tone that
contributed to charm. Therefore even if he had appreciated less the
strange harmonies the Princess drew from her instrument and her genius
there would have been no lack of interest in his situation, in such an
opportunity to watch her admirable outline and movement, the noble
form of her head and face, the gathered-up glories of her hair, the living
flower-like freshness which had no need to turn from the light. She was
dressed in fair colours and as simply as a young girl. Before she ceased
playing she asked him what he would like to do in the afternoon: would
he have any objection to taking a drive with her? It was very possible he
might enjoy the country. She seemed not to attend to his answer, which
was covered by the sound of the piano; but if she had done so it would
have left her very little doubt as to the reality of his inclination. She
remained gazing at the cornice of the room while her hands wandered to
and fro; then suddenly she stopped, got up and came toward him. “It’s
probable that’s the most I shall ever bore you. You know the worst.
Would you very kindly close the piano?” He complied with her request
and she went to another part of the room and sank into an arm-chair.
When he approached her again she said: “Is it really true that you’ve
never seen a park nor a garden nor any of the beauties of nature and that
sort of thing?” The allusion was to something gravely stated in his letter
when he answered the note by which she proposed to him to run down to
Medley, and after he had assured her it was perfectly true she exclaimed:
“I’m so glad—I’m so glad! I’ve never been able to show any one
anything new and have always felt I should like it—especially with a
fine sensitive mind. Then you will come and drive with me?” She spoke
as if this would be a great favour.

That was the beginning of the communion—so strange considering

their respective positions—which he had come to Medley to enjoy, and it
passed into some singular phases. The Princess had an extraordinary way
of taking things for granted, of ignoring difficulties, of assuming that her
preferences might be translated into fact. After her guest had remained
with her ten minutes longer—a period mainly occupied with her
exclamations of delight at his having seen so little of the sort of thing of
which Medley consisted (Where should he have seen it, gracious
heaven? he asked himself); after she had rested thus briefly from her
exertions at the piano she proposed that they should go out-of-doors
together. She was an immense walker—she wanted her regular walk. She
left him for a short time, giving him the last number of the Revue des
Deux Mondes to entertain himself withal and calling his attention in
particular to a story by M. Octave Feuillet (she should be so curious to
know what he thought of it); to reappear later with dark hat and clear
parasol, drawing on fresh loose gloves and offering herself to our young
man at that moment as a sudden incarnation of the heroine of M.
Feuillet’s novel, in which he had instantly become immersed. On their
way downstairs it occurred to her that he had not yet seen the house and
that it would be amusing for her to show it him; so she turned aside and
took him through it, up and down and everywhere, even into the vast
old-fashioned kitchen where they found a small red-faced man in a white
jacket and apron and a white cap (he removed the latter ornament to
salute the little bookbinder) with whom his companion spoke Italian,
which Hyacinth understood sufficiently to perceive that she addressed
her cook in the second person singular, as if he had been a feudal
retainer. He remembered how it was in the same way the three
Musketeers spoke to their lackeys. The Princess explained that the
gentleman in the white cap was a delightful creature (she couldn’t endure
English servants, though she was obliged to have two or three) who
would make her plenty of risottos and polentas—she had quite the palate
of a contadina. She showed Hyacinth everything: the queer
transmogrified corner that had once been a chapel; the secret stairway
which had served in the persecutions of the Catholics (the owners of
Medley were, like the Princess herself, of the old persuasion); the
musicians’ gallery over the hall; the tapestried room which people came
from a distance to see; and the haunted chamber (the two, sometimes
confounded, were quite distinct) where a horrible figure at certain times
made its appearance—a dwarfish ghost with an enormous head, a
dispossessed eldest brother of long ago who had passed for an idiot,
which he wasn’t, and had somehow been made away with. The Princess
offered her visitor the privilege of sleeping in this apartment, declaring
however that nothing would induce her even to enter it alone, she being a
benighted creature, consumed with abject superstitions. “I don’t know if
I’m religious or whether if I were my religion would be superstitious, but
my superstitions are what I’m faithful to.” She made her young friend
pass through the drawing-room very cursorily, remarking that they
should see it again: it was rather stupid—drawing-rooms in English
country-houses were always stupid; indeed if it would amuse him they
would sit there after dinner. Madame Grandoni and she usually sat
upstairs, but they would do anything he should find more comfortable.

At last they came out of the house together and while they went she
explained, to justify herself against the imputation of extravagance, that,
though the place doubtless struck him as absurdly large for a couple of
quiet women and the whole thing was not in the least what she would
have preferred, yet it was all far cheaper than he probably imagined; she
would never have looked at it if it hadn’t been cheap. It must appear to
him so preposterous for a woman to associate herself with the great
uprising of the poor and yet live in palatial halls—a place with forty or
fifty rooms. This was one of her only two allusions as yet to her
infatuation with the “cause”; but it fell very happily, for Hyacinth had
not been unconscious of the anomaly she mentioned. It had been present
to him all day; it added much to the way life practised on his sense of the
tragi-comical to think of the Princess’s having retired to a private
paradise to think out the problem of the slums. He listened therefore with
great attention while she made all conscientiously the point that she had
taken the house only for three months in any case, because she wanted to
rest after a winter of visiting and living in public (as the English spent
their lives, with all their celebrated worship of the “home”) and yet
didn’t wish too soon to return to town; though she was obliged to confess
that she had still the place in South Street on her hands, thanks to her
deciding unexpectedly to go on with it rather than move out her things.
One had to keep one’s things somewhere, and why wasn’t that as good a
dépôt as another? Medley was not what she would have chosen if she
had been left to herself; but she had not been left to herself—she never
was; she had been bullied into taking it by the owners, whom she had
met somewhere and who had made up to her immensely, persuading her
that she might really have it for nothing, for no more than she would give
for the little honeysuckle cottage, the old parsonage embowered in
clematis, which were really what she had been looking for. Besides, it
was one of those old musty mansions, ever so far from town, which it
was always difficult to let or to get a price for; and then it was a
wretched house for any convenience. Hyacinth, for whom his three hours
in the train had been a series of happy throbs, had not been struck with
its geographic remoteness, and he asked the Princess what she meant in
such a connexion by her use of the word “wretched.” To this she replied
that the place was tumbling to pieces, impossible in every respect, full of
ghosts and bad smells. “That’s the only reason I come to have it. I don’t
want you to think me so sunk in luxury or that I throw away money.
Never, never!” Hyacinth had no standard by which he could measure the
importance his opinion would have for her, and he saw that though she
judged him as a creature still open to every initiation, whose naïveté
would entertain her, it was also her fancy to treat him as an old friend, a
person to whom she might have had the habit of referring her difficulties.
Her performance of the part she had undertaken to play was certainly
complete, and everything lay before him but the reason she might have
for playing it.

One of the gardens at Medley took the young man’s heart beyond
the others; it had high brick walls, on the sunny sides of which was a
great training of apricots and plums; it had straight walks bordered with
old-fashioned homely flowers and enclosing immense squares where
other fruit-trees stood upright and mint and lavender floated in the air. In
the southern quarter it overhung a small disused canal, and here a high
embankment had been raised, which was also long and broad and
covered with fine turf; so that the top of it, looking down at the canal,
made a magnificent grassy terrace, than which on a summer’s day there
could be no more delightful place for strolling up and down with a
companion—all the more that at either end was a curious pavilion, in the
manner of a tea-house, which crowned the scene in an old-world sense
and offered rest and privacy, a refuge from sun or shower. One of these
pavilions was an asylum for gardeners’ tools and superfluous flower-
pots; the other was covered inside with a queer Chinese paper
representing ever so many times over a group of people with faces like
blind kittens, groups who drank tea while they sat on the floor. It also
contained a straddling inlaid cabinet in which cups and saucers showed
valuably through doors of greenish glass, together with a carved
cocoanut and a pair of outlandish idols. On a shelf over a sofa which was
not very comfortable, though it had cushions of faded tapestry that
resembled samplers, stood a row of novels out of date and out of print—
novels that one couldn’t have found any more and that were only there.
On the chimney-piece was a bowl of dried rose-leaves mixed with some
aromatic spice, and the whole place suggested a certain dampness.

On the terrace Hyacinth paced to and fro with the Princess till she all
ruefully remembered he had not had his luncheon. He protested that this
was the last thing he wished to think of, but she declared she hadn’t
dragged him down to Medley to starve him and that he must go back and
be fed. They went back, but by a very roundabout way, through the park,
so that they really had half an hour’s more talk. She explained to him
that she herself breakfasted at twelve o’clock, in the foreign fashion, and
had tea in the afternoon; as he too was so foreign he might like that
better, and in this case on the morrow they would breakfast together. He
could have coffee and anything else he wanted brought to his room at his
waking. When he had sufficiently composed himself in the presence of
this latter image—he thought he saw a footman arranging a silver service
at his bedside—he mentioned that really, as regarded the morrow, he
should have to be back in London. There was a train at nine o’clock—he
hoped she didn’t mind his taking it. She looked at him gravely and
kindly, as if considering an abstract idea, and then said: “Oh yes, I mind
it very much. Not to-morrow—some other day.” He made no rejoinder
and the Princess spoke of something else; that is, his rejoinder was
private and consisted of the reflexion that he would leave Medley in the
morning, whatever she might say. He simply couldn’t afford to stay; he
couldn’t be out of work. And then Madame Grandoni thought it so
important; for though the old lady was obscure she was decidedly
impressive. The Princess’s protest, however, was to be reckoned with; he
felt it might take a form less cursory than the words she had just uttered,
a form that would make it embarrassing. She was less solemn, less
explicit, than Madame Grandoni had been, but there was something in
her light fine pressure and the particular tone of her mentioned
preference that seemed to tell him his liberty was going—the liberty he
had managed to keep (till the other day when he gave Hoffendahl a
mortgage on it) and the possession of which had in some degree
consoled him for other forms of penury. This made him uneasy; what
would become of him if he should add another servitude to the one he
had undertaken at the end of that long, anxious cab-drive through the
rain, in the back bedroom of a house as to whose whereabouts he was
even now not clear, while Muniment and Poupin and Schinkel, all visibly
pale, listened and accepted the vow? Muniment and Poupin and Schinkel
—how disconnected, all the same, he felt from them at the present hour;
how little he was the young man who had made the pilgrimage in the
cab; and how the two latter at least, if they could have a glimpse of him
now, would wonder what he was up to!

As to this Hyacinth wondered sufficiently himself, while the

Princess touched upon the people and places she had seen, the
impressions and conclusions she had gathered since their former
meeting. It was to such matters as these she directed the conversation;
she seemed to wish to keep it off his own concerns, and he was surprised
at her continued avoidance of the slums and the question of her intended
sacrifices. She mentioned none of her friends by name, but she talked of
their character, their houses, their manners, taking for granted as before
that Hyacinth would always follow. So far as he followed he was edified,
but he had to admit to himself that half the time he didn’t know what she
was talking about. He at all events, if he had been with the dukes—she
didn’t call her associates dukes, but he was sure they were of that order
—would have got more satisfaction from them. She appeared on the
whole to judge the English world severely; to think poorly of its wit and
even worse of its morals. “You know people oughtn’t to be both corrupt
and dreary,” she said; and Hyacinth turned this over, feeling he certainly
had not yet caught the point of view of a person for whom the aristocracy
was a collection of bores. He had sometimes taken great pleasure in
hearing it dubbed grossly profligate, but he was rather disappointed in
the bad account the Princess gave of it. She dropped the remark that she
herself had no sort of conventional morality—she ought to have
mentioned that before—yet had never been accused of being stupid.
Perhaps he wouldn’t discover it, but most of the people she had had to do
with thought her only too acute. The second allusion she made to their
ulterior designs (Hyacinth’s and hers) was when she said: “I determined
to see it”—she was speaking still of English society—“to learn for
myself what it really is before we blow it up. I’ve been here now a year
and a half and, as I tell you, I feel I’ve seen. It’s the old régime again, the
rottenness and extravagance, bristling with every iniquity and every
abuse, over which the French Revolution passed like a whirlwind; or
perhaps even more a reproduction of the Roman world in its decadence,
gouty, apoplectic, depraved, gorged and clogged with wealth and spoils,
selfishness and scepticism, and waiting for the onset of the barbarians.
You and I are the barbarians, you know.” The Princess was pretty vague
after all in her animadversions and regaled him with no anecdotes—
which indeed he rather missed—that would have betrayed the hospitality
she had enjoyed. She couldn’t treat him absolutely as if he had been an
ambassador. By way of defending the aristocracy he said to her that it
couldn’t be true they were all a bad lot (he used that expression because
she had let him know she liked him to speak in the manner of the people)
inasmuch as he had an acquaintance among them—a noble lady—who
was one of the purest, kindest, most conscientious human beings it was
possible to imagine. At this she stopped short and looked at him; then
she asked: “Whom do you mean—a noble lady?”

“I suppose there’s no harm saying. Lady Aurora Langrish.”

 “I don’t know her. Is she nice?”

“I like her ever so much.”

“Is she pretty, clever?”

“She isn’t pretty, but she’s very uncommon,” said Hyacinth.

“How did you make her acquaintance?” As he hesitated she went on:
“Did you bind some books for her?”

“No. I met her in a place called Audley Court.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Camberwell.”

“And who lives there?”

“A young woman I was calling on, who’s bedridden.”

“And the lady you speak of—what do you call her, Lady Lydia
Languish?—goes to see her?”

“Yes, very often.”

The Princess, with her eyes on him, had a pause. “Will you take me
there?”

“With great pleasure. The young woman I speak of is the sister of

the man—the one who works for a big firm of wholesale chemists—that
you’ll perhaps remember that I mentioned to you.”

“Yes, I remember. It must be one of the first places we go to. I’m

sorry, you know,” the Princess added, walking on. Hyacinth asked what
she might be sorry for, but she took no notice of his question, only soon
saying: “Perhaps she goes to see him.”

“Goes to see whom?”

“The young chemist—the brother.” She said this very seriously.

 “Perhaps she does,” Hyacinth returned, laughing. “But she’s a fine
sort of woman.”

The Princess repeated that she was sorry, and he again wanted to
know for what—for Lady Aurora’s being of that sort? To which she
replied: “No; I mean for my not being the first—what is it you call them?
—noble lady you’ve encountered.”

“I don’t see what difference that makes. You needn’t be afraid you
don’t make an impression on me.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking you might be less fresh

than I first thought.”

“Of course I don’t know what you first thought,” Hyacinth smiled.

“No; how should you?” the Princess strangely sighed.

XXIII

He was in the library after luncheon when word was brought him
that the carriage was at the door for their drive; and when he entered the
hall he found Madame Grandoni bonneted and cloaked and awaiting the
descent of their friend. “You see I go with you. I’m always there,” she
remarked jovially. “The Princess has me with her to take care of her, and
this is how I do it. Besides, I never miss my drive.”

“You’re different from me; this will be the first I’ve ever had in my
life.” He could establish that distinction without bitterness, because he
was too pleased with his prospect to believe the old lady’s presence
could spoil it. He had nothing to say to the Princess that she mightn’t
hear. He didn’t dislike her for coming even after she had said to him in
answer to his own announcement, speaking rather more sententiously
than her wont: “It doesn’t surprise me that you’ve not spent your life in
carriages. They’ve nothing to do with your trade.”

“Fortunately not,” he answered. “I should have made a ridiculous

coachman.”
 The Princess appeared and they mounted into a great square
barouche, an old-fashioned, high-hung vehicle with a green body, a
faded hammer-cloth and a rumble where the footman sat (their hostess
mentioned that it had been let with the house), which rolled ponderously
and smoothly along the winding avenue and through the gilded park-
gates that were surmounted with an immense escutcheon. The progress
of this apparently mismatched trio had a high respectability, and that is
one of the reasons why Hyacinth felt the occasion intensely memorable.
There might still be greater joys in store for him—he was by this time
quite at sea and could recognise no shores—but he should never again in
his life be so respectable. The drive was long and comprehensive, but
little was said while it lasted. “I shall show you the whole country: it’s
exquisitely beautiful; it speaks to the heart.” Of so much as this his
entertainer had informed him at the start; and she added with all her
foreignness and with a light allusive nod at the rich humanised
landscape: “Voilà ce que j’aime en Angleterre.” For the rest she sat there
fronting him in quiet fairness and under her softly-swaying lace-fringed
parasol: moving her eyes to where she noticed his eyes rest; allowing
them when the carriage passed anything particularly charming to meet
his own; smiling as if she enjoyed the whole affair very nearly as much
as he; and now and then calling his attention to some prospect, some
picturesque detail, by three words of a cadence as soft as a hand-stroke.
Madame Grandoni dozed most of the time, her chin resting on the rather
mangy ermine tippet in which she had enveloped herself; expanding into
consciousness at moments, however, to greet the scenery with
comfortable confused ejaculations in the first language that came into her
head. If Hyacinth was uplifted during these delightful hours he at least
measured his vertiginous eminence, and it kept him quite solemnly still,
as with the fear that a wrong movement of any sort would break the
charm, cause the curtain to fall on the play. This was especially the case
when his sensibility swung back from the objects that sprang up by the
way, every one of which was a rich image of something he had longed
for, to the most beautiful woman in England, who sat there, well before
him, as completely for his benefit as if he had been a painter engaged to
paint her portrait. More than once he saw everything through a strange
mist; his eyes were full of tears.

That evening they sat in the drawing-room after dinner, as the

Princess had promised or, as he was inclined to consider it, threatened
him. The force of the threat was in his prevision that the ladies would
make themselves fine and that in contrast with the setting and company
he should feel dingier than ever; having already on his back the one
approach to a “cut” coat he possessed and being unable to exchange it
for a garment of the pattern that civilised people (so much he knew, if he
couldn’t emulate them) put on about eight o’clock. The ladies when they
came to dinner looked festal indeed; but he was able to make the
reflexion that he was more pleased to be dressed as he was dressed,
meanly and unsuitably as it was, than he should have been to present
such a figure as Madame Grandoni, in whose toggery there was
something comical. He was coming more and more round to the sense
that if the Princess didn’t mind his poorness of every sort he had no call
to mind it himself. His present position wasn’t of his seeking—it had
been forced on him; it wasn’t the fruit of a disposition to push. How little
the Princess minded—how much indeed she enjoyed the consciousness
that in having him about her in that manner she was playing a trick on
society, the false and conventional society she had sounded and she
despised—was manifest from the way she had introduced him to the
group they found awaiting them in the hall on the return from their drive:
four ladies, a mother and three daughters, who had come over to call
from Broome, a place some five miles off. Broome was also a great
house, as he gathered, and Lady Marchant, the mother, was the wife of a
county magnate. She explained that they had come in on the persuasion
of the butler, who had represented the return of the Princess as imminent,
and had then administered tea without waiting for this event. The
evening had drawn in chill; there was a fire in the hall and they all sat
near it, round the tea-table, under the great roof that rose to the top of the
house. Hyacinth conversed mainly with one of the daughters, a very fine
girl with a straight back and long arms, whose neck was encircled so
tightly with a fur boa that, to look a little to one side, she was obliged to
move her whole body. She had a handsome inanimate face, over which
the firelight played without making it more lively, a beautiful voice and
the occasional command of a few short words. She asked Hyacinth with
what pack he hunted and whether he went in much for tennis, and she ate
three muffins.

Our young man made out that Lady Marchant and her daughters had
already been at Medley, and even guessed that their reception by the
Princess, who probably thought them of a tiresome type, had not been
enthusiastic; and his imagination projected itself further still, into the
motives which, in spite of this tepidity, must have led them, on
consideration of the rarity of princesses in that country, to come a second
time. The talk in the firelight, while our youth laboured rather recklessly
(for the spirit of the occasion on his hostess’s part was passing into his
own blood) with his muffin-eating beauty—the conversation,
accompanied with the light click of delicate tea-cups, was as well-bred as
could be consistent with an odd evident parti-pris of the Princess’s to put
poor Lady Marchant, as the phrase might be, through her paces. With
great urbanity of manner she appealed for the explanation of everything,
and especially of her ladyship’s own thin remarks and of the sense in
which they had been meant; so that Hyacinth was scarce able to follow
her, wondering what interest she could have in trying to appear dense. It
was only afterwards he learned that the Marchant family produced a very
peculiar and at moments almost maddening effect on her nerves. He
asked himself what would happen to that member of it with whom he
was engaged if it should be revealed to her that she was conversing (how
little soever) with a beggarly London artisan; and though he was rather
pleased at her not having discovered his station (for he didn’t attribute
her brevity to this idea) he entertained a little the question of its being
perhaps his duty not to keep it hidden from her, not to flourish in a
cowardly disguise. What did she take him for—or rather what didn’t she
take him for—when she asked him if he hunted and “went in”? Perhaps
that was because it was rather dark; if there had been more light in the
great vague hall she would have seen he was not one of themselves. He
felt that by this time he had associated a good deal with swells, but they
had always known what he was and had been able to choose how to treat
him. This was the first time a young gentlewoman hadn’t been warned,
and as a consequence he appeared to pass muster. He determined not to
unmask himself, on the simple ground that he should by the same stroke
betray the Princess. It was quite open to her to lean over and say to Miss
Marchant: “You know he’s a wretched little bookbinder who earns a few
shillings a week in a horrid street in Soho. There are all kinds of low
things—and I suspect even something very horrible—connected with his
birth. It seems to me I ought to mention it.” He almost wished she would
mention it for the sake of the strange violent sensation of the thing, a
curiosity quivering within him to know what Miss Marchant would do at
such a pinch and what chorus of ejaculations—or what appalled
irremediable silence—would rise to the painted roof. The responsibility,
however, was not his; he had entered a dim passage of his fate where
responsibilities had dropped. Madame Grandoni’s tea had waked her up;
she came at every crisis to the rescue of the conversation and talked to
the visitors about Rome, where they had once spent a winter, describing
with much drollery the manner in which the English families she had
seen there for nearly half a century (and had met of an evening in the
Roman world) inspected the ruins and monuments and squeezed into the
great ceremonies of the Church. Clearly the four ladies didn’t know what
to make of the Princess; but, though they perhaps wondered if she were a
paid companion, they were on firm ground in the fact that the queer,
familiar, fat person had been acquainted with the Millingtons, the
Bunburys and the Tripps.

After dinner (during which the Princess allowed herself a

considerable licence of pleasantry on the subject of her recent visitors,
declaring that Hyacinth must positively go with her to return their call
and must see their interior, their manner at home) Madame Grandoni sat
down to the piano at Christina’s request and played to her companions
for an hour. The spaces were large in the big drawing-room, and our
friends had placed themselves at a distance from each other. The old
lady’s music trickled forth discreetly into the multiplied mild candlelight;
she knew dozens of Italian local airs, which sounded like the forgotten
tunes of a people, and she followed them by a series of tender, plaintive
German Lieder, rousing without violence the echoes of the high
pompous apartment. It was the music of an old woman and seemed to
quaver a little as her lifted voice might have done. The Princess, buried
in a deep chair, listened behind her fan. Hyacinth at least supposed she
listened, for she never moved. At last Madame Grandoni left the piano
and came to the young man. She had taken up on the way a French book
in a pink cover which she nursed in the hollow of her arm as she stood
looking at him.

“My poor little friend, I must bid you good-night. I shall not see you
again for the present, as, to take your early train, you’ll have left the
house before I put on my wig—and I never show myself to gentlemen
without it. I’ve looked after the Princess pretty well, all day, to keep her
from harm, and now I give her up to you for a little. Take the same care,
I earnestly beg you. I must put myself into my dressing-gown; at my age,
at this hour, it’s the only thing. What will you have? I hate to be tight,”
pursued Madame Grandoni, who appeared even in her ceremonial
garment to have evaded this discomfort successfully enough. “Don’t sit
up late,” she added, “and don’t keep him, Christina. Remember that for
an active young man like Mr. Robinson, going every day to his work,
there’s nothing more exhausting than such an unoccupied life as ours.
For what do we do after all? His eyes are very heavy. Basta!”

During this little address the Princess, who made no rejoinder to that
part of it which concerned herself, remained hidden behind her fan; but
after Madame Grandoni had wandered away she lowered this
emblazoned shield and rested her eyes a while on Hyacinth. At last she
said: “Don’t sit half a mile off. Come nearer to me. I want to say
something to you that I can’t shout across the room.” He immediately
got up, but at the same moment she also rose; so that, approaching each
other, they met half-way and before the great marble chimney-piece. She
stood opening and closing her fan, then she began: “You must be
surprised at my not having yet spoken to you about our great interest.”

“No indeed: I’m not now surprised at anything.”

“When you take that tone I feel as if we should never, after all,
become friends,” said the Princess.
 “I hoped we were already. Certainly after the kindness you’ve shown
me there’s no service of friendship you might ask of me——!”

“That you wouldn’t gladly perform? I know what you’re going to

say, and have no doubt you speak truly. But what good would your
service do me if all the while you think of me as a hollow-headed,
hollow-hearted trifler, behaving in the worst possible taste and
oppressing you with clumsy attentions? Perhaps you believe me a bad,
bold, ravening flirt.”

“Capable of wanting to flirt with me?” Hyacinth demurred. “I should

be very conceited.”

“Surely you’ve the right to be as conceited as you please after the

advances I’ve made you! Pray who has a better one? But you persist in
remaining humble, and that’s very provoking.”

“It’s not I who am provoking; it’s life and society and all the
difficulties that surround us.”

“I’m precisely of that opinion—that they’re exasperating; that when

I appeal to you frankly, candidly, disinterestedly—simply because I like
you, for no other reason in the world—to help me to disregard and
surmount these conventions and absurdities, to treat them with the
contempt they deserve, you drop your eyes, you even blush a little and
make yourself small and try to edge out of the situation by pleading
general devotion and insignificance. Please remember this: you cease to
be insignificant from the moment I’ve anything to do with you. My dear
fellow,” the Princess went on in her free, audacious, fraternising way, to
which her beauty and simplicity gave nobleness, “there are people who
would be very glad to enjoy, in your place, that form of obscurity.”

“What do you wish me then to do?” Hyacinth asked as quietly as he

could.

If he had had an idea that this question, to which, as coming from his
lips and even as being uttered with perceptible impatience, a certain
unexpectedness might attach, would cause her a momentary
embarrassment, he was completely out in his calculation. She answered
on the instant: “I want you to give me time! That’s all I ask of my friends
in general—all I ever asked of the best I’ve ever had. But none of them
ever did it; none of them, that is, save the excellent creature who has just
left us. She understood me long ago.”

“That’s all I on my side ask of you,” said Hyacinth with a smile, as

to attest presence of mind, that might have come from some flushed
young captive under cross-examination for his life. “Give me time, give
me time,” he murmured, looking up at her splendour.

“Dear Mr. Hyacinth, I’ve given you months!—months since our first
meeting. And at present haven’t I given you the whole day? It has been
intentional, my not speaking to you of our plans. Yes, our plans—I know
what I’m saying. Don’t try to look stupid; with your beautiful intelligent
face you’ll never succeed. I wished to leave you free to amuse yourself.”

“Oh, I’ve amused myself,” said Hyacinth.

“You’d have been very fastidious if you hadn’t. However, that’s

precisely in the first place what I wished you to come here for. To
observe the impression made by such a house as this on such a nature as
yours introduced to it for the first time, has been, I assure you, quite
worth my while. I’ve already given you a hint of how extraordinary I
think it that you should be what you are without having seen—what shall
I call them?—beautiful, delightful old things. I’ve been watching you;
I’m frank enough to tell you that. I want you to see more—more—
more!” the Princess exclaimed with a sudden emphasis that, had he heard
her use it to another, he would have taken for a passion of tenderness.
“And I want to talk with you about this matter as well as others. That
will be for to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?”

“I noticed Madame Grandoni took for granted just now that you’re
going. But that has nothing to do with the business. She has so little
imagination!”