“Don’t you belong to the party of action?” said Hyacinth, solemnly. “Look at the way he has picked up all the silly bits of catchwords!” Paul cried, laughing, to his sister. “You must have got that precious phrase out of the newspapers, out of some drivelling leader. Is that the party you want to belong to?” he went on, with his clear eyes ranging over his diminutive friend. “If you’ll show me the thing itself I shall have no more occasion to mind the newspapers,” Hyacinth pleaded. It was his view of himself, and it was not an unfair one, that his was a character that would never beg for a favour; but now he felt that in any relation he might have with Paul Muniment such a law would be suspended. This man he could entreat, pray to, go on his knees to, without a sense of humiliation. “What thing do you mean, infatuated, deluded youth?” Paul went on, refusing to be serious. “Well, you know you do go to places you had far better keep out of, and that often when I lie here and listen to steps on the stairs I’m sure they are coming in to make a search for your papers,” Miss Muniment lucidly interposed. “The day they find my papers, my dear, will be the day you’ll get up and dance.” “What did you ask me to come home with you for?” Hyacinth demanded, twirling his hat. It was an effort for him, for a moment, to keep the tears out of his eyes; he found himself forced to put such a different construction on his new friend’s hospitality. He had had a happy impression that Muniment perceived in him a possible associate, of a high type, in a subterranean crusade against the existing order of things, and now it came over him that the real use he had been put to was to beguile an hour for a pert invalid. That was all very well, and he would sit by Miss Rosy’s bedside, were it a part of his service, every day in the week; only in such a case it should be his reward to enjoy the confidence of her brother. This young man, at the present juncture, justified the high estimate that Lady Aurora Langrish had formed of his intelligence: whatever his natural reply to Hyacinth’s question would have been, he invented, at the moment, a better one, and said, at random, smiling, and not knowing exactly what his visitor had meant— “What did I ask you to come with me for? To see if you would be afraid.” What there was to be afraid of was to Hyacinth a quantity equally vague; but he rejoined, quickly enough, “I think you have only to try me to see.” “I’m sure if you introduce him to some of your low, wicked friends, he’ll be quite satisfied after he has looked round a bit,” Miss Muniment remarked, irrepressibly. “Those are just the kind of people I want to know,” said Hyacinth, ingenuously. His ingenuousness appeared to touch Paul Muniment. “Well, I see you’re a good ’un. Just meet me some night.” “Where, where?” asked Hyacinth, eagerly. “Oh, I’ll tell you where when we get away from _her_,” said his friend, laughing, but leading him out of the room again. X