Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/212

 the effect such a windfall would produce in Hyacinth's career.

'What effect did she mean—do you mean?' Hyacinth inquired. As soon as he had spoken he felt that he knew what the old man would say (it would be a reference to Pinnie's belief in his reunion with his 'relations,' and the facilities that thirty-seven pounds would afford him for cutting a figure among them); and for a moment Mr. Vetch looked at him as if exactly that response were on his lips. At the end of the moment, however, he replied, quite differently—

'She hoped you would go abroad and see the world.' The fiddler watched his young friend; then he added, 'She had a particular wish that you should go to Paris.'

Hyacinth had turned pale at this suggestion, and for a moment he said nothing. 'Ah, Paris!' he murmured, at last.

'She would have liked you even to take a little run down to Italy.'

'Doubtless that would be pleasant. But there is a limit to what one can do with twenty pounds.'

'How do you mean, with twenty pounds?' the old man asked, lifting his eyebrows, while the wrinkles in his forehead made deep shadows in the candle-light.

'That's about what will remain, after I have settled my account with you.'

'How do you mean, your account with me? I shall not take any of your money.'

Hyacinth's eyes wandered over his interlocutor's suggestive rustiness. 'I don't want to be ungracious, but suppose you should lose your powers.'