Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/38

 one. She is, indeed, a perfect little femme du monde—she talks so much better than most of the people in society. I hope you don't mind my saying that, because I have an idea that you are not in society. You can imagine whether I am! Haven't you judged it, like me, condemned it, and given it up? Are you not sick of the egotism, the snobbery, the meanness, the frivolity, the immorality, the hypocrisy? Isn't there a great resemblance in our situation? I don't mean in our nature, for you are far better than I shall ever be. Aren't you quite divinely good? When I see a woman of your sort (not that I often do!) I try to be a little less bad. You have helped hundreds, thousands, of people; you must help me!'

These remarks, which I have strung together, did not, of course, fall from the Princess's lips in an uninterrupted stream; they were arrested and interspersed by frequent inarticulate responses and embarrassed protests. Lady Aurora shrank from them even while they gratified her, blinking and fidgeting in the brilliant, direct light of her hostess's attentions. I need not repeat her answers, the more so as they none of them arrived at completion, but passed away into nervous laughter and averted looks, the latter directed at the ceiling, the floor, the windows, and appearing to constitute a kind of entreaty to some occult or supernatural power that the conversation should become more impersonal. In reply to the Princess's allusion to the convictions prevailing in the Muniment family, she said that the brother and sister thought differently about public questions, but were of the same mind with regard to persons of the upper class taking an interest in the