Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/235

 , and everything had been settled, he would have preferred never to look at the young fellow again. That was his weakness, and Muniment carried it off far otherwise. It must be added that he had never made an allusion to their visit to Hoffendahl; so that Hyacinth also, out of pride, held his tongue on the subject. If his friend didn't wish to express any sympathy for him he was not going to beg for it (especially as he didn't want it), by restless references. It had originally been a surprise to him that Muniment should be willing to countenance a possible assassination; but after all none of his ideas were narrow (Hyacinth had a sense that they ripened all the while), and if a pistol-shot would do any good he was not the man to raise pedantic objections. It is true that, as regards his quiet acceptance of the predicament in which Hyacinth might be placed by it, our young man had given him the benefit of a certain amount of doubt; it had occurred to him that perhaps Muniment had his own reasons for believing that the summons from Hoffendahl would never really arrive, so that he might only be treating himself to the entertainment of judging of a little bookbinder's nerve. But in this case, why did he take an interest in the little bookbinder's going to Paris? That was a thing he would not have cared for had he held that in fact there was nothing to fear. He despised the sight of idleness, and in spite of the indulgence he had more than once been good enough to express on the subject of Hyacinth's epicurean tendencies what he would have been most likely to say at present was, 'Go to Paris? Go to the dickens! Haven't you been out at grass long enough for one while, didn't you lark enough in the country there