He feared she might suppose he meant Madame Grandoni, so he made the plainest answer, having no desire to betray the old lady, and reflecting that, as the likelihood was small that his friend in Camberwell would ever consent to meet the Princess (in spite of her plan of going there), no one would be hurt by it. “A friend of mine in London—Paul Muniment.” “Paul Muniment?” “I think I mentioned him to you the first time we met.” “The person who said something good? I forget what it was.” “It was sure to be something good if he said it; he is very wise.” “That makes his warning very flattering to me! What does he know about me?” “Oh, nothing, of course, except the little that I could tell him. He only spoke on general grounds.” “I like his name—Paul Muniment,” the Princess said. “If he resembles it, I think I should like him.” “You would like him much better than me.” “How do you know how much—or how little—I like you? I am determined to keep hold of you, simply for what you can show me.” She paused a moment, with her beautiful, intelligent eyes smiling into his own, and then she continued, “On general grounds, _bien entendu_, your friend was quite right to warn you. Now those general grounds are just what I have undertaken to make as small as possible. It is to reduce them to nothing that I talk to you, that I conduct myself with regard to you as I have done. What in the world is it I am trying to do but, by every device that my ingenuity suggests, fill up the inconvenient gulf that yawns between my position and yours? You know what I think of ‘positions’; I told you in London. For Heaven’s sake, let me feel that I have—a little—succeeded!” Hyacinth satisfied her sufficiently to enable her, five minutes later, apparently to entertain no further doubt on the question of his staying over. On the contrary, she burst into a sudden ebullition of laughter, exchanging her bright, lucid insistence for one of her singular sallies. “You must absolutely go with me to call on the Marchants; it will be too delightful to see you there!”