Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/177

 She carries everything off; she heeds so little, she cares so little. Besides, she has one great strength—she does no wrong.'

'Pray, what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come and live with her?'

'Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon who the lady is, and what she is.'

'She had better take care of one thing first,' cried Madame Grandoni—'that she shall not have been separated from her husband!'

'The Princess can carry off even that. It's unusual, it's eccentric, it's fantastic, if you will, but it isn't necessarily wicked. From her own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her opinions.'

'Her opinions are perversity itself.'

'What does it matter,' asked Sholto, 'if they keep her quiet?'

'Quiet! Do you call this quiet?'

'Surely, if you'll only be so yourself. Putting the case at the worst, moreover, who is to know he's her bookbinder? It's the last thing you'd take him for.'

'Yes, for that she chose him carefully,' the old lady murmured, still with a discontented eyebrow.

'She chose him? It was I who chose him, dear lady!' the Captain exclaimed, with a laugh which showed how little he shared her solicitude.

'Yes, I had forgotten; at the theatre,' said Madame Grandoni, gazing at him as if her ideas were confused but a certain repulsion from her interlocutor nevertheless disengaged itself. 'It was a fine turn you did him there, poor young man!'