'Excuse me if I remind you that in case of my leaving this place I have to give a fortnight's notice.'
'Ah, you're backing out!' the old man exclaimed, dropping his hands.
'Pinnie wouldn't have said that,' Hyacinth returned. 'If you are acting, if you are speaking, at the prompting of her pure spirit, you had better act and speak exactly as she would have done. She would have believed me.'
'Believed you? Believed what? What is there to believe? If you'll make me a promise, I will believe that.'
'I'll make you any promise you like,' said Hyacinth.
'Oh, any promise I like—that isn't what I want! I want just one very particular little pledge; and that is really what I came here for to-night. It came over me that I've been an ass, all this time, never to have demanded it of you before. Give it to me now, and I will go home quietly and leave you in peace.' Hyacinth, assenting in advance, requested again that he would formulate his demand, and then the old man said, 'Well, promise me that you will never, under any circumstances whatever, do anything.'
'Do anything?'
'Anything that those people expect of you.'
'Those people?' Hyacinth repeated.
'Ah, don't torment me with pretending not to understand!' the old man begged. 'You know the people I mean. I can't call them by their names, because I don't know them. But you do, and they know you.'
Hyacinth had no desire to torment Mr. Vetch, but he was capable of reflecting that to enter into his thought too easily would be tantamount to betraying himself. 'I suppose I know the people you have in mind,' he said, in a
