“Unfortunately! What do you think of him?”
“I wish I couldn’t, either! I haven’t seen him for nearly three years. He wanted to see me to-day, but I refused.”
“Ah!” said Hyacinth, staring and not knowing how he ought to receive so unexpected a confidence. Then, as the suggestions of inexperience are sometimes the happiest of all, he spoke simply what was in his mind and said, gently, “It has made you very nervous.” Afterwards, when he had left the house, he wondered how, at that stage, he could have ventured on such a familiar remark.
The Princess took it with a quick, surprised laugh. “How do you know that?” But before he had time to tell how, she added, “Your saying that—that way—shows me how right I was to ask you to come to see me. You know, I hesitated. It shows me you have perceptions; I guessed as much the other night at the theatre. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have asked you. I may be wrong, but I like people who understand what one says to them, and also what one doesn’t say.”
“Don’t think I understand too much. You might easily exaggerate that,” Hyacinth declared, conscientiously.
“You confirm, completely, my first impression,” the Princess returned, smiling in a way that showed him he really amused her. “We shall discover the limits of your comprehension! I _am_ atrociously nervous. But it will pass. How is your friend the dressmaker?” she inquired, abruptly. And when Hyacinth had briefly given some account of poor Pinnie—told her that she was tolerably well for her, but old and tired and sad, and not very successful—she exclaimed, impatiently, “Ah, well, she’s not the only one!” and came back, with irrelevance, to the former question. “It’s not only my husband’s visit—absolutely unexpected!—that has made me fidgety, but the idea that now you have been so kind as to come here you may wonder why, after all, I made such a point of it, and even think any explanation I might be able to give you entirely insufficient.”
“I don’t want any explanation,” said Hyacinth.
“It’s very nice of you to say that, and I shall take you at your word. Explanations usually make things worse. All the same, I don’t want you to think (as you might have done so easily the other evening) that I wish only to treat you as a curious animal.”