Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/263

 'I don't care about the artists!' the Princess exclaimed, shaking her head, slowly, with the sad smile which sometimes made her beauty so inexpressibly touching.

'Not when they have painted you such beautiful pictures?' Rosy demanded. 'We know about your pictures—we have admired them so much. Mr. Hyacinth has described to us your precious possessions.'

The Princess transferred her smile to Rosy, and rested it on that young lady's shrunken countenance with the same ineffable head-shake. 'You do me too much honour. I have no possessions.'

'Gracious, was it all a make-believe?' Rosy cried, flashing at Hyacinth an eye that was never so eloquent as when it demanded an explanation.

'I have nothing in the world—nothing but the clothes on my back!' the Princess repeated, very gravely, without looking at the young man.

The words struck him as an admonition, so that, though he was much puzzled, he made no attempt, for the moment, to reconcile the contradiction. He only replied, 'I meant the things in the house. Of course I didn't know whom they belonged to.'

'There are no things in my house now,' the Princess went on; and there was a touch of pure, high resignation in the words.

'Laws, I shouldn't like that!' Rose Muniment declared, glancing, with complacency, over her own decorated walls. 'Everything here belongs to me.'

'I shall bring Madame Grandoni to see you,' said the Princess, irrelevantly but kindly.

'Do you think it's not right to have a lot of things