“It’s my brother’s ideas that are grand!” cried Rose Muniment, betraying him conscientiously. “He does want everything changed, no less than you, Princess; though he is more cunning than you, and won’t give one a handle where one can take him up. He thinks all this part most objectionable—as if dirty people won’t always make everything dirty where they live! I dare say he thinks there ought to be no dirty people, and it may be so; only if every one was clean, where would be the merit? You would get no credit for keeping yourself tidy. At any rate, if it’s a question of soap and water, every one can begin by himself. My brother thinks the whole place ought to be as handsome as Brompton.” “Ah, yes, that’s where the artists and literary people live, isn’t it?” asked the Princess, attentively. “I have never seen it, but it’s very well laid out,” Rosy rejoined, with her competent air. “Oh, I like Camberwell better than that,” said Muniment, hilariously. The Princess turned to Lady Aurora, and with the air of appealing to her for her opinion gave her a glance which travelled in a flash from the topmost bow of her large, misfitting hat to the crumpled points of her substantial shoes. “I must get _you_ to tell me the truth,” she murmured. “I want so much to know London—the real London. It seems so difficult!” Lady Aurora looked a little frightened, but at the same time gratified, and after a moment she responded, “I believe a great many artists live in St John’s Wood.” “I don’t care about the artists!” the Princess exclaimed, shaking her head, slowly, with the sad smile which sometimes made her beauty so inexpressibly touching. “Not when they have painted you such beautiful pictures?” Rosy demanded. “We know about your pictures—we have admired them so much. Mr Hyacinth has described to us your precious possessions.” The Princess transferred her smile to Rosy, and rested it on that young lady’s shrunken countenance with the same ineffable head-shake. “You do me too much honour. I have no possessions.” “Gracious, was it all a make-believe?” Rosy cried, flashing at Hyacinth an eye that was never so eloquent as when it demanded an explanation. “I have nothing in the world—nothing but the clothes on my back!” the Princess repeated, very gravely, without looking at the young man. The words struck him as an admonition, so that, though he was much puzzled, he made no attempt, for the moment, to reconcile the contradiction. He only replied, “I meant the things in the house. Of course I didn’t know whom they belonged to.” “There are no things in my house now,” the Princess went on; and there was a touch of pure, high resignation in the words. “Laws, I shouldn’t like that!” Rose Muniment declared, glancing, with complacency, over her own decorated walls. “Everything here belongs to me.” “I shall bring Madame Grandoni to see you,” said the Princess, irrelevantly but kindly.