Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/35

 of it, let me assure you without delay that in that case we shouldn't get on together at all, and had better part company before we go further.' She paused, long enough for Hyacinth to declare, with a great deal of emphasis, that he was not easily shocked; and then, restlessly, eagerly, as if it relieved her to talk, and made their queer interview less abnormal that she should talk most, she arrived at the point that she wanted to know the people, and know them intimately—the toilers and strugglers and sufferers—because she was convinced they were the most interesting portion of society, and at the inquiry, 'What could possibly be in worse taste than for me to carry into such an undertaking a pretension of greater delicacy and finer manners? If I must do that,' she continued, 'it's simpler to leave them alone. But I can't leave them alone; they press upon me, they haunt me, they fascinate me. There it is (after all, it's very simple): I want to know them, and I want you to help me!'

'I will help you with pleasure, to the best of my humble ability. But you will be awfully disappointed,' Hyacinth said. Very strange it seemed to him that within so few days two ladies of rank should have found occasion to express to him the same mysterious longing. A breeze from a thoroughly unexpected quarter was indeed blowing over the aristocracy. Nevertheless, though there was much of the same accent of passion in the Princess Casamassima's communication that there had been in Lady Aurora's, and though he felt bound to discourage his present interlocutress as he had done the other, the force that pushed her struck him as a very different mixture from the shy, conscientious, anxious heresies of Rose Muniment's friend. The temper