of others who will be much more pleased; why not go to _them?_ It’s such a waste of time:” and she was sure he had taken her advice, and was by no means, as regards herself, the absorbed, annihilated creature he endeavoured to appear. He had told her once that he tried to take an interest in other women—though indeed he had added that it was of no use. Of what use did he expect anything he could possibly do to be? Hyacinth did not tell the Princess that he had reason to believe the Captain’s effort in this direction had not been absolutely vain; but he made that reflection, privately, with increased confidence. He recognised a further truth even when his companion said, at the end, that, with all she had touched upon, he was a queer combination. Trifler as he was, there was something sinister in him too; and she confessed she had had a vague feeling, at times, that some day he might do her a hurt. Hyacinth, at this, stopped short, on the threshold of the drawing-room, and asked in a low voice, “Are you afraid of him?” The Princess looked at him a moment; then smiling, “_Dio mio_, how you say that! Should you like to kill him for me?” “I shall have to kill some one, you know. Why not him, while I’m about it, if he troubles you?” “Ah, my friend, if you should begin to kill every one who had troubled me!” the Princess murmured, as they went into the room. XXVII Hyacinth knew there was something out of the way as soon as he saw Lady Aurora’s face look forth at him, in answer to his tap, while she held the door ajar. What was she doing in Pinnie’s bedroom?—a very poor place, into which the dressmaker, with her reverence, would never have admitted a person of that quality unless things were pretty bad. She was solemn, too; she didn’t laugh, as usual; she had removed her large hat, with its limp, old-fashioned veil, and she raised her finger to her lips. Hyacinth’s first alarm had been immediately after he let himself into the house, with his latch-key, as he always did, and found the little room on the right of the passage, in which Pinnie had lived ever since he remembered, fireless and untenanted. As soon as he had paid the cabman, who put down his portmanteau for him in the hall (he was not used to paying cabmen, and was conscious he gave him too much, but was too impatient, in his sudden anxiety, to care), he hurried up the vile staircase, which seemed viler, even through his preoccupation, than ever, and gave the knock, accompanied by a call the least bit tremulous, immediately answered by Lady Aurora. She drew back into the room a moment, while he stared, in his dismay; then she emerged again, closing the door behind her—all with the air of enjoining him to be terribly quiet. He felt, suddenly, so sick at the idea of having lingered at Medley while there was distress at the wretched little house to which he owed so much, that he scarcely found strength for an articulate question, and obeyed, mechanically, the mute, urgent gesture