He had no intention of going in the evening to Madeira Crescent, and that is why he asked his companion, before they separated, if he might not see her again, after tea. The evenings were bitter to him now, and he feared them in advance. The darkness had become a haunted element; it had visions for him that passed even before his closed eyes – sharp doubts and fears and suspicions, suggestions of evil, revelations of suffering. He wanted company, to light up his gloom, and this had driven him back to Millicent, in a manner not altogether consistent with the respect which it was still his theory that he owed to his nobler part. He felt no longer free to drop in at the Crescent, and tried to persuade himself, in case his mistrust should be overdone, that his reasons were reasons of magnanimity. If Paul Muniment were seriously occupied with the Princess, if they had work in hand for which their most earnest attention was required (and Sunday was very likely to be the day they would take: they had spent so much of the previous Sunday together), it would be delicate on his part to stay away, to leave his friend a clear field. There was something inexpressibly representative to him in the way that friend had abruptly decided to re-enter the house, after pausing outside with its mistress, at the moment he himself stood peering through the fog with the Prince. The movement repeated itself innumerable times, to his moral perception, suggesting to him things that he couldn’t bear to learn. Hyacinth was afraid of being jealous, even after he had become so, and to prove to himself that he was not he had gone to see the Princess one evening in the middle of the week. Hadn’t he wanted Paul to know her, months and months before, and now was he to entertain a vile feeling at the first manifestation of an intimacy which rested, in each party to it, upon aspirations that he respected? The Princess had not been at home, and he had turned away from the door without asking for Madame Grandoni; he had not forgotten that on the occasion of his previous visit she had excused herself from remaining in the drawing-room. After the little maid in the Crescent had told him the Princess was out he walked away with a quick curiosity – a curiosity which, if he had listened to it, would have led him to mount upon the first omnibus that travelled in the direction of Camberwell. Was Paul Muniment, who was such a rare one, in general, for stopping at home of an evening – was he also out, and would Rosy, in this case, be in the humour to mention (for of course she would know) where he had gone? Hyacinth let the omnibus pass, for he suddenly became aware, with a throb of horror, that he was in danger of playing the spy. He had not been near Muniment since, on purpose to leave his curiosity unsatisfied. He allowed himself however to notice that the Princess had now not written him a word of consolation, as she had been so kind as to do once or twice before when he had knocked at her door without finding her. At present he had missed her twice in succession, and yet she had given no sign of regret – regret even on his own behalf. This determined him to stay away awhile longer; it was such a proof that she was absorbingly occupied. Hyacinth’s glimpse of the Princess in earnest conversation with Muniment as they returned from the excursion described by the Prince, his memory of Paul’s relenting figure crossing the threshold once more, could leave him no doubt as to the degree of that absorption.
Millicent hesitated when Hyacinth proposed to her that they should finish the day together. She smiled, and her splendid eyes rested on his with an air of indulgent interrogation; they seemed to ask whether it were worth her while, in face of his probable incredulity, to mention the real reason why she could not have the pleasure of acceding to his delightful suggestion. Since he would be sure to deride her explanation, would not some trumped-up excuse do as well, since he could knock that about without hurting her? I know not exactly in what sense Miss Henning decided; but she confessed at last that there was an odious obstacle to their meeting again later – a promise she had made to go and see a young lady, the forewoman of her department, who was kept in-doors with a bad face, and nothing in life to help her pass the time. She was under a pledge to spend the evening with her, and it was not her way to disappoint an expectation. Hyacinth made no comment on this speech; he received it in silence, looking at the girl gloomily.
“I know what’s passing in your mind!” Millicent suddenly broke out. “Why don’t you say it at once, and give me a chance to contradict it? I oughtn’t to care, but I do care!”
“Stop, stop – don’t let us fight!” Hyacinth spoke in a tone of pleading weariness; she had never heard just that accent before.
Millicent considered a moment. “I’ve a mind to play her false. She is a real lady, highly connected, and the best friend I have – I don’t count men,” the girl interpolated, smiling – “and there isn’t one in the world I’d do such a thing for but you.”
“No, keep your promise; don’t play any one false,” said Hyacinth.
“Well, you are a gentleman!” Miss Henning murmured, with a sweetness that her voice occasionally took.
“Especially —” Hyacinth began; but he suddenly stopped.
“Especially what? Something impudent, I’ll engage! Especially as you don’t believe me?”
“Oh, no! Don’t let’s fight!” he repeated.
“Fight, my darling? I’d fight for you!” Miss Henning declared.
Hyacinth offered himself, after tea, the choice between a visit to Lady Aurora and a pilgrimage to Lisson Grove. He was in a little doubt about the former experiment, having an idea that her ladyship’s family might have returned to Belgrave Square. He reflected, however, that he could not recognise that as a reason for not going to see her; his relations with her were not clandestine, and she had given him the kindest general invitation. If her august progenitors were at home she was probably at dinner with them; he would take that risk. He had taken it before, without disastrous results. He was determined not to spend the evening alone, and he would keep the Poupins as a more substantial alternative, in case her ladyship should not be able to receive him.
As soon as the great portal in Belgrave Square was drawn open before him, he perceived that the house was occupied and animated – if the latter term might properly be applied to a place which had hitherto given Hyacinth the impression of a magnificent mausoleum. It was pervaded by subdued light and tall domestics; Hyacinth found himself looking down a kind of colonnade of colossal footmen, an array more imposing even than the retinue of the Princess at Medley. His inquiry died away on his lips, and he stood there struggling with dumbness. It was manifest to him that some high festival was taking place, at which his presence could only be deeply irrelevant; and when a large official, out of livery, bending over him for a voice that faltered, suggested, not unencouragingly, that it might be Lady Aurora he wished to see, he replied in a low, melancholy accent, “Yes, yes, but it can’t be possible!” The butler took no pains to controvert this proposition verbally; he merely turned round, with a majestic air of leading the way, and as at the same moment two of the footmen closed the wings of the door behind the visitor, Hyacinth judged that it was his cue to follow him. In this manner, after traversing a passage where, in the perfect silence of the servants, he heard the shorter click of his plebeian shoes upon a marble floor, he found himself ushered into a small apartment, lighted by a veiled lamp, which, when he had been left there alone, without further remark on the part of his conductor, he recognised as the scene – only now more amply decorated – of one of his former interviews. Lady Aurora kept him waiting a few moments, and then fluttered in with an anxious, incoherent apology. The same transformation had taken place in her own appearance as in the aspect of her parental halls: she had on a light-coloured, crumpled-loo............