Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/74

 quitted was near a corner, which they rounded, the Captain pushing forward as if there were some reason for haste. His haste was checked, however, by an immediate collision with a young woman who, coming in the opposite direction, turned the angle as briskly as themselves. At this moment the Captain gave Hyacinth a great jerk, but not before he had caught a glimpse of the young woman's face—it seemed to flash upon him out of the dusk—and given quick voice to his surprise.

'Hallo, Millicent!' This was the simple cry that escaped from his lips, while the Captain, still going on, inquired, 'What's the matter? Who's your pretty friend?' Hyacinth declined to go on, and repeated Miss Henning's baptismal name so loudly that the young woman, who had passed them without looking back, was obliged to stop. Then Hyacinth saw that he was not mistaken, though Millicent gave no audible response. She stood looking at him, with her head very high, and he approached her, disengaging himself from Sholto, who however hung back only an instant before joining them. Hyacinth's heart had suddenly begun to beat very fast; there was a sharp shock in the girl's turning up just in that place at that moment. Yet when she began to laugh, abruptly, with violence, and to ask him why he was looking at her as if she were a kicking horse, he recognised that there was nothing so very extraordinary, after all, in a casual meeting between persons who were such frequenters of the London Streets. Millicent had never concealed the fact that she 'trotted about,' on various errands, at night; and once, when he had said to her that the less a respectable young woman took the evening