Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/160

 a turn, though he didn't deserve any such favour, after the way he hadn't been near her, if she had died in her garret. She was not one that was to be dropped and taken up at any man's convenience—she didn't keep one of those offices for servants out of place. Millicent expressed the belief that if the day had not been so lovely she would have sent Hyacinth about his business; it was lucky for him that she was always forgiving (such was her sensitive, generous nature), when the sun was out. Only there was one thing—she couldn't abide making no difference for Sunday; it was her personal habit to go to church, and she should have it on her conscience if she gave that up for a lark. Hyacinth had already been impressed, more than once, by the manner in which his blooming friend stickled for the religious observance: of all the queer disparities of her nature, her devotional turn struck him as perhaps the queerest. She held her head erect through the longest and dullest sermon, and came out of the place of worship with her fine face embellished by the publicity of her virtue. She was exasperated by the general secularity of Hyacinth's behaviour, especially taken in conjunction with his general straightness, and was only consoled a little by the fact that if he didn't drink, or fight, or steal, at least he indulged in unlimited wickedness of opinion—theories as bad as anything that people got ten years for. Hyacinth had not yet revealed to her that his theories had somehow lately come to be held with less tension; an instinct of kindness had forbidden him to deprive her of a grievance which ministered so much to sociability. He had not reflected that she would have been more aggrieved, and consequently more delightful, if