LITMIR.BIZ

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creature (which he learned later she was not), aristocracies were complicated things. Lady Aurora remarked that there were many delightful books in French, and Hyacinth rejoined that it was a torment to know that (as he did, very well), when you didn’t see your way to getting hold of them. This led Lady Aurora to say, after a moment’s hesitation, that she had a good lot of her own, and that if he liked she should be most happy to lend them to him. Hyacinth thanked her — thanked her even too much, and felt both the kindness and the brilliant promise of the offer (he knew the exasperation of having volumes in his hands, for external treatment, which he couldn’t take home at night, having tried that system, surreptitiously, during his first weeks at Mr. Crookenden’s and come very near losing his place in consequence), while he wondered how it could be put into practice; whether she would expect him to call at her house and wait in the hall till the books were sent out to him. Eose Muniment exclaimed that that was her ladyship all over — always wanting to make up to people for being less fortunate than herself: she would take the shoes off her feet for any one that might take a fancy to them. At this the visitor declared that she would stop coming to see her, if the girl took her up, that way, for everything; and Rosy, without heeding this remonstrance, explained to Hyacinth that she thought it the least she could do to give what she had. She was so ashamed of being rich that she wondered the lower classes didn’t break into Triglefleld and take possession of all the treasures in the Italian room. She was a tremendous socialist; she was worse than any one — she was worse, even, than Paul.

      “I wonder if she is worse than me,” Hyacinth said, at a venture, not understanding the allusions to Inglefield and the Italian room, which Miss Muniment made as if she knew all about these places. After Hyacinth knew more of the world he remembered this tone of Muniment’s sister (he was to have plenty of observation of it on other occasions) as that of a person who was in the habit of visiting the nobility at their countryseats; she talked about Inglefield as if she had stayed there.

      “Hullo, I didn’t know you were so advanced!” exclaimed Paul Muniment, who had been sitting silent, sidewise, in a chair that was too narrow for him, with his big arm hugging the back. “Have we been entertaining an angel unawares?”

      Hyacinth seemed to see that he was laughing at him, but he knew the way to face that sort of thing was to exaggerate his meaning. “You didn’t know I was advanced? Why, I thought that was the principal thing about me. I think I go about as far as it is possible to go.”

      “I thought the principal thing about you was that you knew French,” Paul Muniment said, with a laugh which showed Hyacinth that he wouldn’t put that ridicule upon him unless he liked him, at the same time that it revealed to him that he himself had just been posturing a little.

      “Well, I don’t know it for nothing. I’ll say something very sharp and clever to you, if you don’t look out — just the sort of thing they say so much in French.”

      “Oh, do say something of that kind; we should enjoy it so much!” cried Rosy, in perfect good faith, clasping her hands in expectation.

      The appeal was embarrassing, but Hyacinth was saved from the consequences of it by a remark from Lady Aurora, who quavered out the words after two or three false starts, appearing to address him, now that she spoke to him directly, with a sort of overdone consideration: “I should like so very much to know — it would be so interesting — if you don’t mind — how far exactly you do go.” She threw back her head very far, and thrust her shoulders forward, and if her chin had been more adapted to such a purpose would have appeared to point it at him.

      This challenge was hardly less alarming than the other, for Hyacinth was far from having ascertained the extent of his advance. He replied, however, with an earnestness with which he tried to make up as far as possible for his vagueness: “Well, I’m very strong indeed. I think I see my way to conclusions from which even M. and Madame Poupin would shrink. Poupin, at any rate; I’m not so sure about his wife.”

      “I should like so much to know Madame,” Lady Aurora murmured, as if politeness demanded that she should content herself with this answer.

      “Oh, Puppin isn’t strong,” said Muniment; “you can easily look over his head. He has a sweet assortment of phrases — they are really pretty things to hear, some of them; but he hasn’t had a new idea since 1848. It’s the old stock faded with being kept in the window. All the same, he warms one up; he has got a spark of the sacred fire. The principal conclusion that Mr. Robinson sees his way to,” he added to Lady Aurora, “is that your father ought to have his head chopped off and carried on a pike.”

      “Ah, yes, the French Revolution.”

      “Heavens! I don’t know anything about your father, ma’am!” Hyacinth interposed.

      “Didn’t you ever hear of the Earl of Inglefield?” cried Rose Muniment.

      “He is one of the best,” said Lady Aurora, as if she were pleading for him.

      “Very likely, but he is a landlord, and he has an hereditary seat and a park of five thousand acres all to himself, while we are bundled together into this sort of kennel.” Hyacinth admired the young man’s consistency until he saw that he was chaffing; after which he still admired the way he mixed up merriment with the tremendous opinions our hero was sure he entertained. In his own imagination Hyacinth associated bitterness with the revolutionary passion; but the young chemist, at the same time that he was planning far ahead, seemed capable of turning revolutionists themselves into ridicule, even for the entertainment of the revolutionized.

      “Well, I have told you often enough that I don’t go with you at all,” said Rose Muniment, whose recumbency appeared not in the least to interfere with her vivacity. “You’ll make a tremendous mistake if you try to turn everything round. There ought to be differences, arid high and low, and there always will be, true as ever I lie here. I think it’s against everything, pulling down them that’s above.”

      “Everything points to great changes in this country, but if once our Rosy’s again’ them, how can you be sure? That’s the only thing that makes me doubt,” her brother went on, looking at her with a placidity which showed the habit of indulgence.

      “Well, I may be ill, but I ain’t buried, and if I’m content with my position — such a position as it is — surely other folk might be with theirs. Her ladyship may think I’m as good as her, if she takes that notion; but she’ll have a deal to do to make me believe it.”

      “I think you are much better than I, and I know very few people so good as you,” Lady Aurora remarked, blushing, not for her opinions, but for her timidity. It was easy to see that, though she was original, she would have liked to be even more original than she was. She was conscious, however, that such a declaration might appear rather gross to persons who didn’t see exactly how she meant it, so she added, as quickly as her hesitating manner permitted, to cover it up, “You know there’s one thing you ought to remember, apropos of revolutions and changes and all that sort of thing; I just mention it because we were talking of some of the dreadful things that were done in France. If there were to be a great disturbance in this country — and of course one hopes there won’t — it would be my impression that the people would behave in. a different way altogether.”

      “What people do you mean?” Hyacinth allowed himself to inquire.

      “Oh, the upper class, the people that have got all the things.”

      “We don’t call them the people,” observed Hyacinth, reflecting the next instant that his remark was a little primitive.

      “I suppose you call them the wretches, the villains!” Rose Muniment suggested, laughing merrily.

      “All the things, but not all the brains,” her brother said.

      “No, indeed, aren’t they stupid?” exclaimed her ladyship. “All the same, I don’t think they would go abroad.”

      “Go abroad?”

      “I mean like the French nobles, who emigrated so much. They would stay at home and resist; they would make

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