Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/200

 He turned away from them, and was leaving the room, when Madame Poupin threw herself upon him, as her husband had done a moment before, but in silence and with an extraordinary force of passion and distress. Being stout and powerful she quickly got the better of him, and pressed him to her ample bosom in a long, dumb embrace.

'I don't know what you want me to do,' said Hyacinth, as soon as he could speak. 'It's for me to judge of my convictions.'

'We want you to do nothing, because we know you have changed,' Poupin replied. 'Doesn't it stick out of you, in every glance of your eye and every breath of your lips? It's only for that, because that alters everything.'

'Does it alter my engagement? There are some things in which one can't change. I didn't promise to believe; I promised to obey.'

'We want you to be sincere—that is the great thing,' said Poupin, edifyingly. 'I will go to see them—I will make them understand.'

'Ah, you should have done that before!' Madame Poupin groaned.

'I don't know whom you are talking about, but I will allow no one to meddle in my affairs.' Hyacinth spoke with sudden vehemence; the scene was cruel to his nerves, which were not in a condition to bear it.

'When it is Hoffendahl, it is no good to meddle,' Schinkel remarked, smiling.

'And pray, who is Hoffendahl, and what authority has he got?' demanded Madame Poupin, who had caught his meaning. 'Who has put him over us all, and is there