Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/155

 his new friend's hospitality. He had had a happy impression that Muniment perceived in him a possible associate, of a high type, in a subterranean crusade against the existing order of things, and now it came over him that the real use he had been put to was to beguile an hour for a pert invalid. That was all very well, and he would sit by Miss Rosy's bedside, were it a part of his service, every day in the week; only in such a case it should be his reward to enjoy the confidence of her brother. This young man, at the present juncture, justified the high estimate that Lady Aurora Langrish had formed of his intelligence: whatever his natural reply to Hyacinth's question would have been, he invented, at the moment, a better one, and said, at random, smiling, and not knowing exactly what his visitor had meant,

'What did I ask you to come with me for? To see if you would be afraid.'

What there was to be afraid of was to Hyacinth a quantity equally vague; but he rejoined, quickly enough, 'I think you have only to try me to see.'

'I'm sure if you introduce him to some of your low, wicked friends, he'll be quite satisfied after he has looked round a bit,' Miss Muniment remarked, irrepressibly.

'Those are just the kind of people I want to know,' said Hyacinth, ingenuously.

His ingenuousness appeared to touch Paul Muniment. 'Well, I see you're a good 'un. Just meet me some night.'

'Where, where?' asked Hyacinth, eagerly.

'Oh, I'll tell you where when we get away from her,' said his friend, laughing, but leading him out of the room again.