Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/112

 'Marry him, do you think?'

'What else, pray?' the Princess asked. 'She adores the ground he walks on.'

'And what would Belgrave Square, and Inglefield, and all the rest of it, say?'

'What do they say already, and how much does it make her swerve? She would do it in a moment, and it would be fine to see it, it would be magnificent,' said the Princess, kindling, as she was apt to kindle, at the idea of any great freedom of action.

'That certainly wouldn't be a case of what you call sticking in the middle,' Hyacinth rejoined.

'Ah, it wouldn't be a matter of logic; it would be a matter of passion. When it's a question of that, the English, to do them justice, don't stick!'

This speculation of the Princess's was by no means new to Hyacinth, and he had not thought it heroic, after all, that their high-strung friend should feel herself capable of sacrificing her family, her name, and the few habits of gentility that survived in her life, of making herself a scandal, a fable, and a nine days' wonder, for Muniment's sake; the young chemist's assistant being, to his mind, as we know, exactly the type of man who produced convulsions, made ruptures and renunciations easy. But it was less clear to him what ideas Muniment might have on the subject of a union with a young woman who should have come out of her class for him. He would marry some day, evidently, because he would do all the natural, human, productive things; but for the present he had business on hand which would be likely to pass first. Besides—Hyacinth had seen him give evidence of this—he didn't think people