Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/130

 the footman sat (the Princess mentioned that it had been let with the house), which rolled ponderously and smoothly along the winding avenue and through the gilded gates (they were surmounted with an immense escutcheon) of the park. The progress of this oddly composed trio had a high respectability, and that is one of the reasons why Hyacinth felt the occasion to be tremendously memorable. There might still be greater joys in store for him—he was by this time quite at sea, and could recognise no shores—but he would never again in his life be so respectable. The drive was long and comprehensive, but very little was said while it lasted. 'I shall show you the whole country: it is exquisitely beautiful; it speaks to the heart.' Of so much as this his hostess had informed him at the start; and she added, in French, with a light, allusive nod at the rich, humanised landscape, Voilà ce que j'aime en Angleterre. For the rest, she sat there opposite to him, in quiet fairness, under her softly-swaying, lace-fringed parasol: moving her eyes to where she noticed that his eyes rested; allowing them, when the carriage passed anything particularly charming, to meet his own; smiling as if she enjoyed the whole affair very nearly as much as he; and now and then calling his attention to some prospect, some picturesque detail, by three words of which the cadence was sociable. Madame Grandoni dozed most of the time, with her chin resting on rather a mangy ermine tippet, in which she had enveloped herself; expanding into consciousness at moments, however, to greet the scenery with comfortable polyglot ejaculations. If Hyacinth was exalted, during these delightful hours, he at least measured his exaltation, and it kept him almost solemnly still, as if with the fear that a