He did know, however; that is he knew her to be in communication with strange birds of passage, to have, or to believe she had, irons on the fire, to hold in her hand some of the strings that are pulled in great movements. She received letters that made Madame Grandoni watch her askance, of which, though she knew nothing of their contents and had only her general suspicions and her scent for disaster, now dismally acute, the old woman had spoken more than once to Hyacinth. Madame Grandoni had begun to have sombre visions of the interference of the police: she was haunted with the idea of a search for compromising papers; of being dragged herself, as an accomplice in direful plots, into a court of justice, possibly into a prison. “If she would only burn—if she would only burn! But she keeps—I know she keeps!” she groaned to Hyacinth in her helpless gloom. He could only guess what it might be she kept; asking himself if she were seriously entangled, were being really exploited by plausible outlaws, predatory adventurers who counted on her getting frightened at a given moment and offering hush-money to be allowed to slip out—out of a complicity which they themselves of course would never have taken seriously; or were merely coquetting with paper schemes, giving herself cheap sensations, discussing preliminaries that could have no second stage. It would have been easy for him to smile at her impression that she was “in it,” and to conclude that even the cleverest women fail to know when they are futile, had not the vibration remained which had been imparted to his nerves two years before and of which he had spoken to his hostess at Medley—the sense, vividly kindled and never quenched, that the forces secretly arrayed against the present social order were pervasive and universal, in the air one breathed, in the ground one trod, in the hand of an acquaintance that one might touch or the eye of a stranger that might rest a moment on one’s own. They were above, below, within, without, in every contact and combination of life; and it was no disproof of them to say it was too odd they should lurk in a particular, improbable form. To lurk in improbable forms was precisely their strength, and they would doubtless have still queerer features to show than this of the Princess’s being a genuine participant even when she most flattered herself she was. “You do go too far,” he none the less said to her the evening Lady Aurora had passed him at the door.