Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/227

 shrieks, she said at last to her companion, 'She's a tidy lot, your Princess, by what I learn.'

'Pray, what do you know about her?'

'I know what that fellow told me.'

'And pray, what was that?'

'Well, she's a bad 'un, as ever was. Her own husband has had to turn her out of the house.'

Hyacinth remembered the allusion the lady herself had made to her matrimonial situation; nevertheless, what he would have liked to reply to Miss Henning was that he didn't believe a word of it. He withheld the doubt, and after a moment remarked quietly, 'I don't care.'

'You don't care? Well, I do, then!' Millicent cried. And as it was impossible, in view of the performance and the jealous attention of their neighbours, to continue the conversation in this pitch, she contented herself with ejaculating, in a somewhat lower key, at the end of five minutes, during which she had been watching the stage, 'Gracious, what dreadful common stuff!'