Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/136

 three false starts, appearing to address him, now that she spoke to him directly, with a sort of overdone consideration. 'I should like so very much to know—it would be so interesting—if you don't mind—how far exactly you do go.' She threw back her head very far, and thrust her shoulders forward, and if her chin had been more adapted to such a purpose would have appeared to point it at him.

This challenge was hardly less alarming than the other, for Hyacinth was far from having ascertained the extent of his advance. He replied, however, with an earnestness with which he tried to make up as far as possible for his vagueness: 'Well, I'm very strong indeed. I think I see my way to conclusions, from which even Monsieur and Madame Poupin would shrink. Poupin, at any rate; I'm not so sure about his wife.'

'I should like so much to know Madame,' Lady Aurora murmured, as if politeness demanded that she should content herself with this answer.

'Oh, Puppin isn't strong,' said Muniment; 'you can easily look over his head! He has a sweet assortment of phrases—they are really pretty things to hear, some of them; but he hasn't had a new idea these thirty years. It's the old stock that has been withering in the window. All the same, he warms one up; he has got a spark of the sacred fire. The principal conclusion that Mr. Robinson sees his way to,' he added to Lady Aurora, 'is that your father ought to have his head chopped off and carried on a pike.'

'Ah, yes, the French Revolution.'

'Lord, I don't know anything about your father, my lady!' Hyacinth interposed.