“Pray what do you call it when a lady sends for a bookbinder to come and live with her?” “Why not for a bookbinder as well as for a bishop? It all depends upon who the lady is and what she is.” “She had better take care of one thing first,” cried Madame Grandoni—“that she shall not have been separated, with a hundred stories, from her husband!” “The Princess can carry off even that. It’s unusual, it’s eccentric, it’s fantastic if you will, but it isn’t necessarily wicked. From her own point of view our friend goes straight. Besides, she has her opinions.” “Her opinions are perversity itself.” “What does it matter,” asked Sholto, “if they keep her quiet?” “Quiet! Do you call this quiet?” “Surely, if you’ll only be so yourself. Putting the case at the worst, moreover, who’s to know he’s her bookbinder? It’s the last thing you’d take him for.” “Yes, for that she chose him carefully,” the old woman murmured, still with a ruffled eyebrow. “_She_ chose him? It was I who chose him, dear lady!” the Captain cried with a laugh that showed how little he shared her solicitude. “Yes, I had forgotten. At the theatre,” said Madame Grandoni, gazing at him as if her ideas were confused, yet as if a certain repulsion from her interlocutor nevertheless disengaged itself. “It was a fine turn you did him there, poor young man!” “Certainly he’ll have to be sacrificed. But why was I bound to consider him so much? Haven’t I been sacrificed myself?” “Oh if he bears it like you!”—and she almost snorted with derision. “How do you know how I bear it? One does what one can,” said the Captain while he settled his shirt-front. “At any rate remember this: she won’t tell people who he is for his own sake, and he won’t tell them for hers. So, as he looks much more like a poet or a pianist or a painter, there won’t be that sensation you fear.” “Even so it’s bad enough,” said Madame Grandoni. “And he’s capable of bringing it out suddenly himself.” “Ah if he doesn’t mind it _she_ won’t! But that’s his affair.” “It’s too terrible to spoil him for his station,” the old lady went on. “How can he ever go back?” “If you want him kept then indefinitely you’re inconsistent. Besides, if he pays for it he deserves to pay. He’s an abominable little conspirator against society.” Madame Grandoni was silent a time; then she looked at the Captain with a gravity which might have been impressive to him had not his accomplished jauntiness suggested an insensibility to that sort of influence. “What then does Christina deserve?” she asked with solemnity. “Whatever she may get; whatever in the future may make her suffer. But it won’t be the loss of her reputation. She’s too distinguished.” “You English are strange. Is it because she’s a princess?” Madame Grandoni reflected audibly. “Oh dear no, her princedom’s nothing here. We can easily beat that. But we can’t beat——!” And he had a pause. “What then?” his companion asked.