Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/186

 they were unhappy, and they were right not to rail about that.

'Oh, I like to see you—I like to talk with you,' said Lady Aurora, simply. They talked for a quarter of an hour, and he made her such a visit as any gentleman might have made to any lady. They exchanged remarks about the lateness of the spring, about the loan-exhibition at Burlington House which Hyacinth had paid his shilling to see—about the question of opening the museums on Sunday, about the danger of too much coddling legislation on behalf of the working classes. He declared that it gave him great pleasure to see any sign of her amusing herself; it was unnatural never to do that, and he hoped that now she had taken a turn she would keep it up. At this she looked down, smiling, at her frugal finery, and then she replied, 'I dare say I shall begin to go to balls—who knows?'

'That's what our friends in Audley Court think, you know—that it's the worst mistake you can make, not to drink deep of the cup while you have it.'

'Oh, I'll do it, then—I'll do it for them!' Lady Aurora exclaimed. 'I dare say that, as regards all that, I haven't listened to them enough.' This was the only allusion that passed on the subject of the Muniments.

Hyacinth got up—he had stayed long enough, as she was going out; and as he held out his hand to her she seemed to him a heroine. She would try to cultivate the pleasures of her class if the brother and sister in Camberwell thought it right—try even to be a woman of fashion in order to console herself. Paul Muniment didn't care for her, but she was capable of considering that it might be her