Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/69

 acting perfectly the part of the most brilliant figure the place had ever contained. The old implements were there on the table: the pincushions and needle-books; the pink measuring-tape with which, as children, she and Hyacinth used to take each other's height; and the same collection of fashion-plates (she could see in a minute), crumpled, sallow and fly-blown. The little dressmaker bristled, as she used to do, with needles and pins (they were stuck all over the front of her dress), but there were no rustling fabrics tossed in heaps about the room—nothing but the skirt of a shabby dress (it might have been her own), which she was evidently repairing and had flung upon the table when she came to the door. Miss Henning speedily arrived at the conclusion that her hostess's business had not increased, and felt a kind of good-humoured, luxurious scorn of a person who knew so little what was to be got out of London. It was Millicent's belief that she herself was already perfectly acquainted with the resources of the metropolis.

'Now tell me, how is Hyacinth? I should like so much to see him,' she remarked, extending a pair of large protrusive feet and supporting herself on the sofa by her hands.

'Hyacinth?' Miss Pynsent repeated, with majestic blankness, as if she had never heard of such a person. She felt that the girl was cruelly, scathingly, well dressed; she couldn't imagine who she was, nor with what design she could have presented herself. 'Perhaps you call him Mr. Robinson, to-day—you always wanted him to hold himself so high. But to his face, at any rate, I'll call him as I used to: you see if I don't!'