“The young man you saw the other day thinks so,” the old woman smiled. “Sometimes she calls it by another name: she says she has thrown herself with passion into being ‘modern.’ That sums up the greatest number of things that you and your family are not.” “Yes, we’re not anything of that low sort, thank God! _Dio mio, Dio mio!_” groaned the Prince. He seemed so exhausted by his reflexions that he remained sitting in his chair after his companion, lifting her crumpled corpulence out of her own, had proposed that they should walk about a little. She had no ill-nature, but she had already noticed that whenever she was with Christina’s husband the current of conversation made her, as she phrased it, bump against him. After administering these small shocks she always steered away, and now, the Prince having at last got up and offered her his arm, she tried again to talk with him of things he could consider without bitterness. She asked him about the health and habits of his uncles, and he replied for the moment with the minuteness he had been taught that in such a case courtesy demanded; but by the time that at her request they had returned to the gate nearest South Street (she wished him to come no further) he had prepared a question to which she had not opened the way. “And who and what then is this English captain? About him there’s a great deal said.” “This English captain?” “Godfrey Gerald Cholto—you see I know a good deal about him,” said the Prince, articulating the English names with difficulty. They had stopped near the gate, on the edge of Park Lane, and a couple of predatory hansoms dashed at them from opposite quarters. “I thought that was coming, and at bottom it’s he who has occupied you most!” Madame Grandoni exclaimed with a sigh. “But in reality he’s the last one you need trouble about. He doesn’t count the least little bit.” “Why doesn’t he count?” “I can’t tell you—except that some people don’t, you know. He doesn’t even think he does.” “Why not, when she receives him always—lets him go wherever she goes?” “Perhaps that’s just the reason. When people give her a chance to get tired of them she takes it rather easily. At any rate you needn’t be any more jealous of him than you are of me. He’s a convenience, a _factotum_, but he works without wages.” “Isn’t he then in love with her?” “Naturally. He has, however, no hope.” “Ah, poor gentleman!” said the Prince lugubriously. “He accepts the situation better than you. He occupies himself—as she has strongly recommended him in my hearing to do—with other women!” “Oh the brute!” the Prince exclaimed. “At all events he sees her.” “Yes, but she doesn’t see _him_!” laughed Madame Grandoni as she turned away. XIX