“It’s my brother’s ideas that are grand!” cried Rose Muniment, betraying him conscientiously. “He does want everything changed, no less than you, Princess; though he’s more cunning than you and won’t give one a handle where one can take him up. He thinks all this part most objectionable—as if dirty people won’t always make everything dirty where they live! I daresay he thinks there ought to be no dirty people, and it may be so; only if every one was clean where would be the merit? You’d get no credit for keeping yourself tidy. If it’s a question of soap and water, at any rate, every one can begin by himself. My brother thinks the whole place ought to be as handsome as Brompton.” “Ah yes, that’s where the artists and literary people live, isn’t it?” the Princess asked attentively. “I’ve never seen it, but it’s very well laid out,” Rosy returned with her competent manner. “Oh I like Camberwell better than that,” Muniment said with due amusement. The Princess turned to Lady Aurora and, with the air of appealing to her for her opinion, gave her a glance that travelled in a flash from the topmost bow of her large misfitting hat to the crumpled points of her substantial shoes. “I must get _you_ to tell me the truth,” she breathed. “I want so much to know London—the real London. It seems so difficult!” Lady Aurora looked a little frightened, but at the same time gratified, and after a moment responded: “I believe a great many artists live in Saint John’s Wood.” “I don’t care about the artists!” said the Princess, shaking her head slowly and with the sad smile that sometimes made her beauty so inexpressibly touching. “Not when they’ve painted you such beautiful pictures?” Rosy demanded. “We know about your pictures—we’ve admired them so much. Mr. Hyacinth has described to us your precious possessions.” The Princess transferred her smile to Rosy and rested it on that young lady’s shrunken countenance with the same ineffable head-shake. “You do me too much honour. I’ve no possessions.” “Gracious, was it all a make-believe?” Rosy cried, flashing at Hyacinth an eye that was never so eloquent as when it demanded an explanation. “I’ve nothing in the world—nothing but the clothes on my back!” the Princess repeated very gravely and without looking at their indiscreet friend. The words struck Hyacinth as an admonition, so that, though much puzzled, he made no attempt for the moment to reconcile the contradiction. He only replied: “I meant the things in the house. Of course I didn’t know to whom they belonged.” “There are no things in my house now,” the Princess went on; and there was a touch of pure, high resignation in the words. “Laws, I shouldn’t like that!” Rose Muniment declared, glancing with complacency over her own decorated walls. “Everything here belongs to me.” “I shall bring Madame Grandoni to see you,” said the Princess irrelevantly but kindly.