Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/230

 'I shouldn't be satisfied with anything, if ever you was to slip up,' Millicent answered, simply, looking at him with her beautiful boldness. Then she added, 'There's one thing I can tell you, Mr. Robinson: that if ever any one was to do you a turn—' And she paused again, tossing back the head she carried as if it were surmounted by a tiara, while Hyacinth inquired what would occur in that contingency. 'Well, there'd be one left behind who would take it up!' she announced; and in the tone of the declaration there was something brave and genuine. It struck Hyacinth as a strange fate—though not stranger, after all, than his native circumstances—that one's memory should come to be represented by a shop-girl overladen with bracelets of imitation silver; but he was reminded that Millicent was a fine specimen of a woman of a type opposed to the whining, and that in her free temperament many disparities were reconciled.