“No certainly, you’ve never told me much. But if, as is probable, you’ve seen that kind lady who’s now upstairs you’ll have learned that Pinnie made a tremendous point of your not being disturbed. She threatened us with her displeasure if we should hurry you back. You know what Pinnie’s displeasure is!” As at this Hyacinth turned away with a gesture of irritation Mr. Vetch went on: “No doubt she’s absurdly fanciful, poor dear thing; but don’t now cast any disrespect on it. I assure you that if she had been here alone, suffering, sinking, without a creature to tend her and nothing before her but to die in a corner like a starved cat, she would still have faced that fate rather than cut short by a single hour your experience of novel scenes.” Hyacinth turned it miserably over. “Of course I know what you mean. But she spun her delusion—she always did all of them—out of nothing. I can’t imagine what she knows about my ‘experience’ of any kind of scenes. I told her when I went out of town very little more than I told you.” “What she guessed, what she gathered, has been at any rate enough. She has made up her mind that you’ve formed a connexion by means of which you’ll come somehow or other into your own. She has done nothing but talk about your grand kindred. To her mind, you know, it’s all one, the aristocracy; and nothing’s simpler than that the person—very exalted, as she believes—with whom you’ve been to stay should undertake your business with her friends.” “Oh well,” said Hyacinth, “I’m very glad not to have deprived you of that entertainment.” “I assure you the spectacle was exquisite.” Then the fiddler added: “My dear fellow, please leave her the idea.” “Leave it? I’ll do much more!” Hyacinth returned. “I’ll tell her my great relations have adopted me and that I’ve come back in the character of Lord Robinson.” “She’ll need nothing more to die happy,” said Mr. Vetch. Five minutes later, after Hyacinth had obtained from his old friend a confirmation of Lady Aurora’s account of Miss Pynsent’s condition, this worthy explaining that he came over like that to see how she was half-a-dozen times a day—five minutes later a silence had descended upon the pair while our youth awaited some sign from Lady Aurora that he might come upstairs. The fiddler, who had lighted a pipe, looked out of the window as if the view were a chart of all the grey past; and Hyacinth, making his tread discreet, walked about the room with his hands in his pockets. At last Mr. Vetch observed without taking his pipe out of his lips or looking round: “I think you might be a little more frank with me at this time of day and at such a crisis.”