If he had expected that this description of his friend was a bigger dose than his hostess would be able to digest, he was greatly mistaken. She seemed to look tenderly at the picture suggested by his words, and she immediately inquired whether the young man were also clever, and whether she might not hope to know him. Hadn’t Captain Sholto seen him; and if so, why hadn’t he spoken of him, too? When Hyacinth had replied that Captain Sholto had probably seen him, but that he believed he had had no particular conversation with him, the Princess inquired, with startling frankness, whether her visitor wouldn’t bring his friend, some day, to see her.
Hyacinth glanced at Madame Grandoni, but that worthy woman was engaged in a survey of the house, through an old-fashioned eye-glass with a long gilt handle. He had perceived, long before this, that the Princess Casamassima had no desire for vain phrases, and he had the good taste to feel that, from himself to such a personage, compliments, even if he had wished to pay them, would have had no suitability. “I don’t know whether he would be willing to come. He’s the sort of man that, in such a case, you can’t answer for.”
“That makes me want to know him all the more. But you’ll come yourself, at all events, eh?”
Poor Hyacinth murmured something about the unexpected honour; for, after all, he had a French heredity, and it was not so easy for him to make unadorned speeches. But Madame Grandoni, laying down her eye-glass, almost took the words out of his mouth, with the cheerful exhortation, “Go and see her—go and see her once or twice. She will treat you like an angel.”
“You must think me very peculiar,” the Princess remarked, sadly.
“I don’t know what I think. It will take a good while.”
“I wish I could make you trust me—inspire you with confidence,” she went on. “I don’t mean only you, personally, but others who think as you do. You would find I would go with you—pretty far. I was answering just now for Captain Sholto; but who in the world is to answer for me?” And her sadness merged itself in a smile which appeared to Hyacinth extraordinarily magnanimous and touching.
“Not I, my dear, I promise you!” her ancient companion ejaculated, with a laugh which made the people in the stalls look up at the box.