Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/224

 balcony with her instrument. The orchestra had been for some time playing the overture to the following act.

Hyacinth hesitated a moment. 'I live with a dressmaker.'

'With a dressmaker? Do you mean—do you mean?' And the Princess paused.

'Do you mean she's your wife?' asked Madame Grandoni, humorously.

'Perhaps she gives you rooms,' remarked the Princess.

'How many do you think I have? She gives me everything, or she has done so in the past. She brought me up; she is the best little woman in the world.'

'You had better command a dress!' exclaimed Madame Grandoni.

'And your family, where are they?' the Princess continued.

'I have no family.'

'None at all?'

'None at all. I never had.'

'But the French blood that you speak of, and which I see perfectly in your face—you haven't the English expression, or want of expression—that must have come to you through some one.'

'Yes, through my mother.'

'And she is dead?'

'Long ago.'

'That's a great loss, because French mothers are usually so much to their sons.' The Princess looked at her painted fan a moment, as she opened and closed it; after which she said, 'Well, then, you'll come some day. We'll arrange it.'