“Ah, because I’ve not been at the ‘Sun and Moon’? Well, I’ve been constantly out of town, you know. And then—don’t you see what I mean?—I want to be tremendously careful. That’s the way to get on, isn’t it? But I daresay you don’t believe in my discretion!” Sholto laughed. “What shall I do to make you understand? I say, have a brandy and soda,” he continued as if this might assist Hyacinth’s comprehension. He seemed a trifle flurried and, were it possible to imagine such a thing of so independent and whimsical a personage, the least bit abashed or uneasy at having been found in such a low place. Yet it was not any lower than the “Sun and Moon.” He was dressed on this occasion according to his station, without the pot-hat and the shabby jacket, and Hyacinth looked at him with the pang of the felt charm that a good tailor would add to life. Our hero was struck more than ever before with his being the type of man whom, as he strolled about observing people, he had so often regarded with wonder and envy—the sort of man of whom one said to one’s self that he was the “finest white,” feeling that he and his like had the world in their pocket. Sholto requested the barmaid to please not dawdle in preparing the brandy and soda Hyacinth had thought to ease off the situation by accepting: this indeed was perhaps what the finest white would naturally do. And when the young man had taken the glass from the counter didn’t he appear to encourage him not to linger as he drank it and to smile down at him very kindly and amusedly, as if the combination of so small a bookbinder and so big a tumbler were sufficiently droll? The Captain took time, however, to ask how he had spent his autumn and what was the news in Bloomsbury; he further inquired about those jolly people across the river. “I can’t tell you what an impression they made on me—that evening you know.” After this he went on suddenly and irrelevantly: “And so you’re just going to stay on for the winter quietly?” Our hero stared: he wondered what other high course could be imputed to him; he couldn’t reflect immediately that this was the sort of thing the finest whites said to each other when they met after their fashionable dispersals, and that his friend had only been guilty of a momentary inadvertence. In point of fact the Captain recovered himself. “Oh, of course you’ve got your work, and that sort of thing”; and as Hyacinth didn’t succeed in swallowing at a gulp the contents of his big tumbler he asked him presently if he had heard anything from the Princess. Our youth replied that he could have no news except what the Captain might be good enough to give him; but he added that he had been to see her just before she left town. “Ah, you did go? That was quite right—jolly right.” “I went because she very kindly wrote me to come.” “Ah, she wrote to you to come?” The Captain fixed him a moment with his curious colourless eyes. “Do you know you’re a devilish privileged mortal?”