'You mean your famous engagement, your vow? Oh, that will never come to anything.'
'Why won't it come to anything?'
'It's too absurd, it's too vague. It's like some silly humbug in a novel.'
'Vous me rendez la vie!' said Hyacinth, theatrically.
'You won't have to do it,' the Princess went on.
'I think you mean I won't do it. I have offered, at least; isn't that a title?'
'Well, then, you won't do it,' said the Princess; and they looked at each other a couple of minutes in silence.
'You will, I think, at the pace you are going,' the young man resumed.
'What do you know about the pace? You are not worthy to know!'
He did know, however; that is, he knew that she was in communication with foreign socialists and had, or believed she had, irons on the fire—that she held in her hand some of the strings that are pulled in great movements. She received letters that made Madame Grandoni watch her askance, of which, though she knew nothing of their contents and had only her general suspicions and her scent for disaster, now become constant, the old woman had spoken more than once to Hyacinth. Madame Grandoni had begun to have sombre visions of the interference of the police: she was haunted with the idea of a search for compromising papers; of being dragged, herself, as an accomplice in direful plots, into a court of justice—possibly into a prison. 'If she would only burn—if she would only burn! But she keeps—I know she keeps!' she groaned
