Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/213

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XXVIII
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
201

'My dear boy, I shall have one of the resources that was open to Pinnie. I shall look to you to be the support of my old age.'

'You may do so with perfect safety, except for that danger you just mentioned, of my being imprisoned or hanged.'

'It's precisely because I think it will be less if you go abroad that I urge you to take this chance. You will see the world, and you will like it better. You will think society, even as it is, has some good points,' said Mr. Vetch.

'I have never liked it better than the last few months.'

'Ah well, wait till you see Paris!'

'Oh, Paris—Paris,' Hyacinth repeated, vaguely, staring into the turbid flame of the candle as if he made out the most brilliant scenes there; an attitude, accent and expression which the fiddler interpreted both as the vibration of a latent hereditary chord and a symptom of the acute sense of opportunity.