On the present occasion she let him know he might have his pleasure if he would first accompany her to church; and it was in vain he represented to her that this proceeding would deprive them of their morning, inasmuch as after church she would have to dine and in the interval there would be no time left. She replied with a toss of her head that she dined when she liked; besides, on Sundays she had cold fare—it was left out for her: an argument to which Hyacinth had to assent, his ignorance of her domestic economy being complete, thanks to the maidenly mystery, the vagueness of reference and explanation in which, despite great freedom of complaint, perpetual announcements of intended change, of impending promotion and of high bids for her services in other quarters, she had always enshrouded her private affairs. He walked by her side to the place of worship she preferred—her choice was made apparently from a large experience; and as they went he observed that it was a good job he wasn’t married to her. Lord, how she would bully him, how she would “squeeze” him, in such a case! The worst of it would be that—such was his amiable, peace-loving nature—he should obey like a showman’s poodle. And pray who _was_ a man to obey, asked Millicent, if he wasn’t to obey his own wife? She sat up in her pew with a majesty that carried out this idea; she seemed to answer in her proper person for creeds and communions and sacraments; she was more than devotional, she was individually almost pontifical. Hyacinth had never felt himself under such distinguished protection; the Princess Casamassima came back to him in comparison as a loose Bohemian, a shabby adventuress. He had sought her out to-day not for the sake of her austerity—he had had too gloomy a week for that—but for that of her genial side; yet now that she treated him to the severer spectacle it struck him for the moment as really grand sport, a kind of magnification of her rich vitality. She had her phases and caprices like the Princess herself, and if they were not the same as those of the lady of Madeira Crescent they proved at least that she was as brave a woman. No one but a really big creature could give herself such airs; she would have a consciousness of the large reserve of pliancy required to make up for them. The Princess wanted to destroy society and Millicent to uphold it; and as Hyacinth, by the side of his childhood’s friend, listened to practised intonings and felt the brush of a rich unction, he was obliged to recognise the liberality of a fate that had sometimes appeared invidious. He had been provided with the best opportunities for choosing between the beauty of the original and the beauty of the conventional.