The Captain invited information as to the position in life, the avocations and habits of the other lodgers, the rent they paid, their relations with each other, both in and out of the family. “Now would there be a good deal of close packing, do you suppose, and any perceptible want of—a—sobriety?” Paul Muniment, who had swallowed his cup of tea at a single gulp—there was no offer of a second—gazed out of the window into the dark, which had now come on, with his hands in his pockets, whistling, impolitely, no doubt, but with extreme animation. He had the manner of having made over their visitor altogether to Rosy and of thinking that whatever that personage said or did was all so much grist to her indefatigable little mill. Lady Aurora writhed in her pain, and it is a proof of the degree to which our slight hero had the instincts of a man of the world that he guessed exactly how vulgar she thought this new acquaintance. She was doubtless rather vexed also—Hyacinth had learned this evening that Lady Aurora could be vexed—at the alacrity of Rosy’s responses: the little person in the bed gave the Captain every satisfaction, considered his questions as a proper tribute to humble respectability and supplied him, as regards the population of Audley Court, with statistics and anecdotes picked up by mysterious processes of her own. At last her ladyship, on whom Paul Muniment had not been at pains to bestow much conversation, took leave of her, signifying to Hyacinth that for the rest of the evening she would assume the care of Miss Pynsent. Pinnie might have been consciously laid bare for monstrous rites now that she was really about to be transported to Belgrave Square, but Hyacinth was sure she would acquit herself only the more honourably; and when he offered to call for her there later on she reminded him under her breath and with a small sad smile of the many years during which, after nightfall, she carried her work, pinned up in a cloth, about London.