Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/121

 always interfused; it was a spirit that seemed, at moments, in argument, to mock at her own contention. 'Besides, isn't that the very thing you want to bring about?' she went on. 'Isn't that what you are plotting and working and waiting for? She wants to throw herself into it—to work with you.'

'My dear girl, she doesn't understand a pennyworth of what I think. She couldn't if she would.'

'And no more do I, I suppose you mean.'

'No more do you; but with you it's different. If you would, you could. However, it matters little who understands and who doesn't, for there's mighty little of it. I'm not doing much, you know.'

Rosy lay there looking up at him. 'It must be pretty thick, when you talk that way. However, I don't care what happens, for I know I shall be looked after.'

'Nothing will happen—nothing will happen,' Paul remarked, simply.

The girl's rejoinder to this was to say in a moment, 'You have a different tone since you have taken up the Princess.'

She spoke with a certain severity, but he broke out, as if he had not heard her, 'I like your idea of the female aristocracy quarrelling over a dirty brute like me.'

'I don't know how dirty you are, but I know you smell of soap,' said Rosy, with serenity. 'They won't quarrel; that's not the way they do it. Yes, you are taking a different tone, for some purpose that I can't discover just yet.'

'What do you mean by that? When did I ever take a tone?' her brother asked.

'Why then do you speak as if you were not remarkable,