Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/86

 tickets,' she declared. Then she added, 'What is it you suppose on Mr. Robinson's part? for you must suppose something.'

'Well, that he may have drawn some accursed lot, to do some idiotic thing—something in which even he himself doesn't believe.'

'I haven't an idea of what sort of thing you mean. But, if he doesn't believe in it he can easily let it alone.'

'Do you think he's a customer who will back out of an engagement?' the fiddler asked.

The Princess hesitated a moment. 'One can never judge of people, in that way, until they are tested.' The next thing, she inquired, 'Haven't you even taken the trouble to question him?'

'What would be the use? He would tell me nothing. It would be like a man giving notice when he is going to fight a duel.'

The Princess sat for some moments in thought; she looked up at Mr. Vetch with a pitying, indulgent smile. 'I am sure you are worrying about a mere shadow; but that never prevents, does it? I still don't see exactly how I can help you.'

'Do you want him to commit some atrocity, some infamy?' the old man murmured.

'My dear sir, I don't want him to do anything in all the wide world. I have not had the smallest connection with any arrangement of any kind, that he may have entered into. Do me the honour to trust me,' the Princess went on, with a certain dryness of tone. 'I don't know what I have done to deprive myself of your