Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/196

 destined—it would seem, at least—to arrive within a day or two. The old foreman was going to set up for himself. The Frenchman intimated that before accepting any such proposal he must have the most substantial guarantees. Il me faudrait des conditions très-particulières.' It was singular to Hyacinth to hear M. Poupin talk so comfortably about these high contingencies, the chasm by which he himself was divided from the future having suddenly doubled its width. His host and hostess sat down on either side of him, and Poupin gave a sketch, in somewhat sombre tints, of the situation in Soho, enumerating certain elements of decomposition which he perceived to be at work there and which he would not undertake to deal with unless he should be given a completely free hand. Did Schinkel understand, and was that what Schinkel was grinning at? Did Schinkel understand that poor Eustache was the victim of an absurd hallucination and that there was not the smallest chance of his being invited to assume a lieutenancy? He had less capacity for tackling the British workman to-day than when he began to rub shoulders with him, and Mr. Crookenden had never in his life made a mistake, at least in the use of his tools. Hyacinth's responses were few and mechanical, and he presently ceased to try to look as if he were entering into the Frenchman's ideas.

'You have some news—you have some news about me,' he remarked, abruptly, to Schinkel. 'You don't like it, you don't like to have to give it to me, and you came to ask our friends here whether they wouldn't help you out with it. But I don't think they will assist you particularly, poor dears! Why do you mind? You oughtn't to mind more than I do. That isn't the way.'