“Do you mean you’ll get another room at this hour of the night, with your little house stuffed full and your people all in bed? My poor Anastasius, you’re very bad; your reason totters on its throne,” said Hyacinth with excellent gaiety. “Very good, we’ll get a room to-morrow. I’ll move into another house where there are two side by side.” His “boy’s” tone was evidently soothing to him. “_Comme vous y allez!_” the young man continued. “Excuse me if I remind you that in case of my leaving this place I’ve to give a fortnight’s notice.” “Ah you’re backing out!” Mr. Vetch lamented, dropping his hands. “Pinnie wouldn’t have said that,” Hyacinth returned. “If you’re acting, if you’re speaking, at the behest of her pure spirit, you had better act and speak exactly as she’d have done. She’d have believed me.” “Believed you? Believed what? What’s there to believe? If you’ll make me a promise I’ll believe that.” “I’ll make you any promise you like,” said Hyacinth. “Oh any promise I like—that isn’t what I want! I want just one very particular little proof—and that’s really what I came here for to-night. It came over me that I’ve been an ass all this time never to have got it out of you before. Give it to me now and I’ll go home quietly and leave you in peace.” Hyacinth, assenting in advance, requested again that he would formulate his demand, and then Mr. Vetch said: “Well, make me a promise—on your honour and as from the man you are, God help you, to the man I am—that you’ll never, under any circumstances whatever, ‘do’ anything.” “‘Do’ anything——?” “Anything those people expect of you.” “Those people?” Hyacinth repeated. “Ah don’t torment me—worried as I already am—with pretending not to understand!” the old man wailed. “You know the people I mean. I can’t call them by their names, because I don’t know their names. But you do, and they know _you_.” Hyacinth had no desire to torment him, but he was capable of reflecting that to enter into his thought too easily would be tantamount to betraying himself. “I suppose I know the people you’ve in mind,” he said in a moment; “but I’m afraid I don’t grasp the need of such solemnities.” “Don’t they want to make use of you?” “I see what you mean,” said Hyacinth. “You think they want me to touch off some train for them. Well, if that’s what troubles you, you may sleep sound. I shall never do any of their work.” A radiant light came into the fiddler’s face; he stared as if this assurance were too fair for nature. “Do you take your oath to that? Never anything, anything, anything?” “Never anything at all.” “Will you swear it to me by the memory of that good woman of whom we’ve been speaking and whom we both loved?” “My dear old Pinnie’s memory? Willingly.”