Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/99

 Millicent seemed to imply that he defended himself successfully when she said, 'You express yourself like a gentleman'—a speech to which he made no response. But he began to talk again afterwards, and, the evening having definitely set in, his companion took his arm for the rest of the way home. By the time he reached her door he had confided to her that, in secret, he wrote: he had a dream of literary distinction. This appeared to impress her, and she branched off to remark, with an irrelevance that characterised her, that she didn't care anything about a man's family if she liked the man himself; she thought families were played out. Hyacinth wished she would leave his alone; and while they lingered in front of her house, before she went in, he said—

'I have no doubt you're a jolly girl, and I am very happy to have seen you again. But you have awfully little tact.'

'I have little tact? You should see me work off an old jacket!'

He was silent a moment, standing before her with his hands in his pockets. 'It's a good job you're so handsome.'

Millicent didn't blush at this compliment, and probably didn't understand all it conveyed, but she looked into his eyes a while, with a smile that showed her teeth, and then said, more inconsequently than ever, 'Come now, who are you?'

'Who am I? I'm a wretched little bookbinder.'

'I didn't think I ever could fancy any one in that line!' Miss Henning exclaimed. Then she let him know that she couldn't ask him in, as she made it a point not to