Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/77

 as they walked; at once nursing and wrestling with a kindled suspicion. He was pale with the idea that he was being bamboozled; yet he was able to say to himself that one must allow, in life, for the element of coincidence, and that he might easily put himself immensely in the wrong by making a groundless charge. It was only later that he pieced his impressions together and saw them—as it appeared—justify each other; at present, as soon as he had uttered it, he was almost ashamed of his quick retort to Millicent's taunt. He ought at least to have waited to see what Curzon Street would bring forth.

The girl broke out upon him immediately, repeating 'False, false?' with high derision, and wanting to know whether that was the way to knock a lady about in public. She had stopped short on the edge of a crossing, and she went on, with a voice so uplifted that he was glad they were in a street that was rather empty at such an hour: 'You're a pretty one to talk about falsity, when a woman has only to leer at you out of an opera-box!'

'Don't say anything about her,' the young man interposed, trembling.

'And pray why not about "her," I should like to know? You don't pretend she's a decent woman, I suppose?' Millicent's laughter rang through the quiet neighbourhood.

'My dear fellow, you know you have been to her,' Captain Sholto remarked, smiling.

Hyacinth turned upon him, staring, at once challenged and baffled by his ambiguous part in an incident it was doubtless possible to magnify but it was not possible to treat as perfectly simple. 'Certainly, I have been to the