Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/151

 hand. 'After all, as my visit is finished and as yours comes to nothing, might we not go out?'

'Certainly, I will go with you,' said Hyacinth. He spoke with an instinctive stiffness, in spite of the Prince's queer affability, and in spite also of the fact that he felt sorry for the nobleman, to whose countenance Madame Grandoni's last injunction, uttered in English, had brought a deep and painful blush. It is needless to go into the question of what Hyacinth, face to face with an aggrieved husband, may have had on his conscience, but he assumed, naturally enough, that the situation might be grave, though indeed the Prince's manner was, for the moment, incongruously conciliatory. Hyacinth invited his new acquaintance to pass, and in a minute they were in the street together.

'Do you go here—do you go there?' the Prince inquired, as they stood a moment before the house. 'If you will permit, I will take the same direction.' On Hyacinth's answering that it was indifferent to him the Prince said, turning to the right, 'Well, then, here, but slowly, if that pleases you, and only a little way.' His English was far from perfect, but his errors were mainly errors of pronunciation, and Hyacinth was struck with his effort to express himself very distinctly, so that in intercourse with a little representative of the British populace his foreignness should not put him at a disadvantage. Quick as he was to perceive and appreciate, Hyacinth noted how a certain quality of breeding that was in his companion enabled him to compass that coolness, and he mentally applauded his success in a difficult feat. Difficult he judged it because it seemed to him that the purpose for which the Prince wished to speak to him was one which must require a deal of