It must not be supposed that his relations with Millicent had remained unaffected by the remarkable incident that had brushed her with its wing at the theatre. The whole occurrence had made a great impression on the young lady from Pimlico; he never saw her, for weeks afterwards, that she had not an immense deal to say about it; and though it suited her to cultivate the shocked state at the crudity of such proceedings and to denounce the Princess for a bold-faced foreigner, of a kind to which any one who knew anything of what could go on in London would give a wide berth, it was easy to see she enjoyed having rubbed shoulders across the house with a person so splendid and having found her own critical estimate of her friend confirmed in such high quarters. She professed to draw her warrant for her low opinion of the lady in the box from information given her by Captain Sholto as he sat beside her—information of which at different moments she gave a different version; her notes of it having nothing in common save that they were alike unflattering to the Princess. Hyacinth had many doubts of the Captain’s having talked indiscreetly; it would be in such a case such a very unnatural thing for him to do. He _was_ unnatural—that was true—and he might have told Millicent, who was capable of having plied him with questions, that his distinguished friend was separated from her husband; but, for the rest, it was more probable that the girl had given the rein to a fine faculty of free invention of which he had had frequent glimpses, under pressure of her primitive half-childish, half-plebeian impulse of destruction, the instinct of pulling down what was above her, the reckless energy that would, precisely, make her so effective in revolutionary scenes. Hyacinth (it has been mentioned) didn’t consider that Millicent was false, and it struck him as a proof of positive candour that she should make up absurd, abusive stories about a person as to whom she only knew that she disliked her and could hope for no esteem, and indeed for no recognition of any kind, in return. When people were fully false you didn’t know where you stood with them, and on such a point as this Miss Henning could never be accused of leaving you in obscurity. She said little else about the Captain and didn’t pretend to repeat the remainder of his conversation, taking on her air of grand indifference when Hyacinth amused himself with repaying her criticism of his new acquaintance by drawing a sufficiently derisive portrait of hers.