Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/142

 'You would like him much better than me.'

'How do you know how much—or how little—I like you? I am determined to keep hold of you, simply for what you can show me.' She paused a moment, with her beautiful, intelligent eyes smiling into his own, and then she continued, 'On general grounds, bien entendu, your friend was quite right to warn you. Now those general grounds are just what I have undertaken to make as small as possible. It is to reduce them to nothing that I talk to you, that I conduct myself with regard to you as I have done. What in the world is it I am trying to do but, by every device that my ingenuity suggests, fill up the inconvenient gulf that yawns between my position and yours? You know what I think of "positions"; I told you in London. For Heaven's sake let me feel that I have—a little—succeeded!' Hyacinth satisfied her sufficiently to enable her, five minutes later, apparently to entertain no further doubt on the question of his staying over. On the contrary, she burst into a sudden ebullition of laughter, exchanging her bright, lucid insistence for one of her singular sallies. 'You must absolutely go with me to call on the Marchants; it will be too delightful to see you there!'

As he walked up and down the empty drawing-room it occurred to him to ask himself whether that was mainly what she was keeping him for—so that he might help her to play one of her tricks on the good people at Broome. He paced there, in the still candlelight, for a longer time than he measured; until the butler came and stood in the doorway, looking at him silently and fixedly, as if to let him know that he interfered with the custom of the