Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/194

 (his being a gentleman or one of the sovereign people) he formerly was so perplexed; if the sentiment excited by Mr. Vetch in a mind familiar now for nearly a month with forms of indubitable gentility was not favourable to the idea of fraternisation, this secret impatience on Hyacinth's part was speedily corrected by one of the sudden reactions or quick conversions of which the young man was so often the victim. In the light of the fiddler's appeal, which evidently meant more than it said, his musty antiquity, his typical look of having had, for years, a small, definite use and taken all the creases and contractions of it, his visible expression, even, of ultimate parsimony and of having ceased to care for the shape of his trousers because he cared more for something else—these things became so many reasons for turning round, going over to him, touching signs of an invincible fidelity, the humble, continuous, single-minded practice of daily duties and an art after all very charming; pursued, moreover, while persons of the species our restored prodigal had lately been consorting with fidgeted from one selfish sensation to another and couldn't even live in the same place for three months together.

'What should you like me to do, to say, to tell you? Do you want to know what I have been doing in the country? I should have first to know, myself,' Hyacinth said.

'Have you enjoyed it very much?'

'Yes, certainly, very much—not knowing anything about Pinnie. I have been in a beautiful house, with a beautiful woman.'

Mr. Vetch had turned round; he looked very impartial, through the smoke of his pipe.