Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/54

 picked by a sewing-girl. But his life-long reserve on this point was a habit not easily broken, and before such an inquiry could flash through it Muniment had gone on: 'If you've ceased to believe we can do anything, it will be rather awkward, you know.'

'I don't know what I believe, God help me!' Hyacinth remarked, in a tone of an effect so lugubrious that Paul gave one of his longest, most boyish-sounding laughs. And he added, 'I don't want you to think I have ceased to care for the people. What am I but one of the poorest and meanest of them?'

'You, my boy? You're a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first time I ever saw you. That night I took you to Hoffendahl you had a little way with you that made me forget it; I mean that your disguise happened to be better than usual. As regards caring for the people, there's surely no obligation at all,' Muniment continued. 'I wouldn't if I could help it—I promise you that. It all depends on what you see. The way I've used my eyes in this abominable metropolis has led to my seeing that present arrangements won't do. They won't do,' he repeated, placidly.

'Yes, I see that, too,' said Hyacinth, with the same dolefulness that had marked his tone a moment before—a dolefulness begotten of the rather helpless sense that, whatever he saw, he saw (and this was always the case), so many other things beside. He saw the immeasurable misery of the people, and yet he saw all that had been, as it were, rescued and redeemed from it: the treasures, the felicities, the splendours, the successes, of the world. All this took the form, sometimes, to his imagination, of a vast,