and Rosy, without heeding the remonstrance, explained to Hyacinth that she thought it the least she could do to give what she had. She was so ashamed of being rich that she wondered the lower classes didn’t break into Inglefield and take possession of all the treasures in the Italian room. She was a tremendous socialist; she was worse than any one—she was worse even than Paul. “I wonder if she’s worse than me,” Hyacinth returned at a venture, not understanding the allusions to Inglefield and the Italian room, which Miss Muniment made as if she knew all about these places. After learning more of the world he remembered this tone of Muniment’s sister—he was to have plenty of observation of it on other occasions—as that of a person in the habit of visiting the nobility at their country-seats; she talked about Inglefield as if she had stayed there. “Hullo, I didn’t know you were so advanced!” exclaimed the master of the scene, who had been sitting silent and sidewise in a chair that was too narrow for him, his big arm hugging the back. “Have we been entertaining an angel unawares?” Hyacinth made out he was chaffing him, but he knew the way to face that sort of thing was to exaggerate one’s meaning. “You didn’t know I was advanced? Why, I thought that was the principal thing about me. I think I go about as far as any one.” “I thought the principal thing about you was that you knew French,” Paul Muniment said with an air of derision which showed him he wouldn’t put that ridicule upon him unless he liked him, at the same time that it revealed to him how he had come within an ace of posturing. “Well, I don’t know it for nothing. I’ll say something that will take your head off if you don’t look out—just the sort of thing they say so well in French.” “Oh, do say something of that kind; we should enjoy it so much!” cried Rosy in perfect good faith and clasping her hands for expectation. The appeal was embarrassing, but Hyacinth was saved from the consequences of it by a remark from Lady Aurora, who quavered out the words after two or three false starts, appearing to address him, now that she spoke to him directly, with a sort of overdone consideration. “I should like so very much to know—it would be so interesting—if you don’t mind—how far exactly you do go.” She threw back her head very far and thrust her shoulders forward, and if her chin had been more adapted to such a purpose would have appeared to point it at him. This challenge was hardly less alarming than the other, for he was far from being ready with an impressive formula. He replied, however, with a candour in which he tried as far as possible to sink his vagueness: “Well, I’m very strong indeed. I think I see my way to conclusions from which even Monsieur and Madame Poupin would shrink. Poupin, at any rate; I’m not so sure about his wife.” “I should like so much to know Madame,” Lady Aurora murmured as if politeness demanded that she should content herself with this answer.