Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/236

 with the noble lady, and hadn't you better take up your tools again before you forget how to handle them?' Rosy had said something of that sort, in her free, familiar way (whatever her intention, she had been, in effect, only a little less sarcastic than old Crookenden): that Mr. Robinson was going in for a life of leisure, a life of luxury, like herself; she must congratulate him on having the means and the time. Oh, the time—that was the great thing! She could speak with knowledge, having always enjoyed these advantages herself. And she intimated—or was she mistaken?—that his good fortune emulated hers also in the matter of his having a high-born and beneficent friend (such a blessing, now he had lost dear Miss Pynsent), who covered him with little attentions. Rose Muniment, in short, had been more exasperating than ever.

The boulevard became even more brilliant as the evening went on, and Hyacinth wondered whether he had a right to occupy the same table for so many hours. The theatre on the other side discharged its multitude; the crowd thickened on the wide asphalt, on the terrace of the cafe; gentlemen, accompanied by ladies of whom he knew already how to characterise the type—des femmes très-chic—passed into the portals of Tortoni. The nightly emanation of Paris seemed to rise more richly, to float and hang in the air, to mingle with the universal light and the many-voiced sound, to resolve itself into a thousand solicitations and opportunities, addressed however mainly to those in whose pockets the chink of a little loose gold might respond. Hyacinth's retrospections had not made him drowsy, but quite the reverse; he grew restless and excited, and a kind of pleasant terror of the place and hour