“I mean that that was the impression apparently made upon him last winter by my description of her.” “Oh I’m sure he thinks her tremendously plucky!” Which was all the satisfaction Hyacinth got just then as to Muniment’s estimate of the Princess. A few days later he returned to Madeira Crescent in the evening, the only time he was free, the Princess having given him a general invitation to take tea with her. He felt he ought to be discreet in acting on it, though he was not without reasons that would have warranted him in going early and often. He had a peculiar dread of her growing used to him and tired of him—boring herself in his society; yet at the same time he had rather a sharp vision of her boring herself without him during the dull summer evenings when even Paddington was out of town. He wondered what she did, what visitors dropped in, what pastimes she cultivated, what saved her from the sudden vagary of throwing up the whole of her present game. He remembered that there was a complete side of her life with which he was almost unacquainted—Lady Marchant and her daughters, at Medley, and three or four other persons who had called while he was there being, in his experience, the only illustrations of it—and didn’t know, by the same token, to what extent she had in spite of her transformation preserved relations with her old friends; but he made out as looming the day she would discover that what she found in Madeira Crescent was less striking than what she missed. Going thither a second time he noted, for all this, that he had done her great injustice: she was full of resources, she had never been so happy, she found time to read, to write, to commune with her piano and above all to think—a delightful detachment from the invasive, vulgar, gossiping, distracting world she had known hitherto. The only interruption to her felicity was that she received quantities of notes from her former acquaintance, endless appeals to give some account of herself, to say what had become of her, to come and stay with them in the country. With these survivals of her past she took a very short way, she simply burned them without answering. She told Hyacinth immediately that Lady Aurora had called two days before, at an hour when she was not in, and that she had straightway addressed her in return an invitation to come to tea any evening at eight o’clock. That was the way the people in Madeira Crescent entertained each other—the Princess knew everything about them now and was eager to impart her knowledge; and the evening, she was sure, would be much more convenient to Lady Aurora, whose days were filled with good works, with peregrinations of charity. Her ladyship arrived ten minutes after Hyacinth; she assured the Princess her invitation had been expressed in a manner so flattering that she was unwilling to wait more than a day to respond. She was introduced to Madame Grandoni and tea all