Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/230

 his view of capital punishment, he said that, so far from wishing it abolished, he should go in for extending it much further—he should impose it on those who habitually lied or got drunk; but his friend had always a feeling that he kept back his best card and that even in the listening circle in Bloomsbury, when only the right men were present, there were unspoken conclusions in his mind which he didn't as yet think any one good enough to be favoured with. So far, therefore, from suspecting him of half-heartedness, Hyacinth was sure that he had extraordinary things in his head; that he was thinking them out to the logical end, wherever it might land him; and that the night he should produce them, with the door of the club-room guarded and the company bound by a tremendous oath, the others would look at each other and turn pale.

'She wants to see you; she asked me to bring you; she was very serious,' Hyacinth said, relating his interview with the ladies in the box at the play which, however, now that he looked back upon it, seemed as queer as a dream, and not much more likely than that sort of experience to have a continuation in one's waking hours.

'To bring me—to bring me where?' asked Muniment. 'You talk as if I were a sample out of your shop, or a little dog you had for sale. Has she ever seen me? Does she think I'm smaller than you? What does she know about me?'

'Well, principally, that you're a friend of mine—that's enough for her.'

'Do you mean that it ought to be enough for me that she's a friend of yours? I have a notion you'll have some queer ones before you're done; a good many more than I have time to talk to. And how can I go to see a delicate