Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/169

 there, and as a colour heightened by emotion is never unbecoming to a handsome woman, it enriched her exceptional expression. 'I wouldn't have been so rough with you,' she presently remarked.

'My dear lass, this isn't rough!' her companion exclaimed.

'You're all of a tremble.' She put out her hand and laid it on his own, as if she had been a nurse feeling his pulse.

'Very likely. I'm a nervous little beast,' said Hyacinth.

'Any one would be nervous, to think of anything so awful. And when it's yourself!' And the girl's manner represented the dreadfulness of such a contingency. 'You require sympathy,' she added, in a tone that made Hyacinth smile; the words sounded like a medical prescription.

'A tablespoonful every half-hour,' he rejoined, keeping her hand, which she was about to draw away.

'You would have been nicer, too,' Millicent went on.

'How do you mean, I would have been nicer?'

'Well, I like you now,' said Miss Henning. And this time she drew away her hand, as if, after such a speech, to recover her dignity.

'It's a pity I have always been so terribly under the influence of women,' Hyacinth murmured, folding his arms.

He was surprised at the delicacy with which Millicent replied: 'You must remember that they have a great deal to make up to you.'

'Do you mean for my mother? Ah, she would have made it up, if they had let her! But the sex in general have been very nice to me,' he continued. 'It's wonderful