“I wonder if she is worse than me,” Hyacinth said, at a venture, not understanding the allusions to Inglefield and the Italian room, which Miss Muniment made as if she knew all about these places. After Hyacinth knew more of the world he remembered this tone of Muniment’s sister (he was to have plenty of observation of it on other occasions) as that of a person who was in the habit of visiting the nobility at their country-seats; she talked about Inglefield as if she had stayed there.
“Hullo, I didn’t know you were so advanced!” exclaimed Paul Muniment, who had been sitting silent, sidewise, in a chair that was too narrow for him, with his big arm hugging the back. “Have we been entertaining an angel unawares?”
Hyacinth seemed to see that he was laughing at him, but he knew the way to face that sort of thing was to exaggerate his meaning. “You didn’t know I was advanced? Why, I thought that was the principal thing about me. I think I go about as far as it is possible to go.”
“I thought the principal thing about you was that you knew French,” Paul Muniment said, with an air of derision which showed Hyacinth that he wouldn’t put that ridicule upon him unless he liked him, at the same time that it revealed to him that he himself had just been posturing a little.
“Well, I don’t know it for nothing. I’ll say something very neat and sharp to you, if you don’t look out—just the sort of thing they say so much in French.”
“Oh, do say something of that kind; we should enjoy it so much!” cried Rosy, in perfect good faith, clasping her hands in expectation.
The appeal was embarrassing, but Hyacinth was saved from the consequences of it by a remark from Lady Aurora, who quavered out the words after two or three false starts, appearing to address him, now that she spoke to him directly, with a sort of overdone consideration. “I should like so very much to know—it would be so interesting—if you don’t mind—how far exactly you do go.” She threw back her head very far, and thrust her shoulders forward, and if her chin had been more adapted to such a purpose would have appeared to point it at him.
This challenge was hardly less alarming than the other, for Hyacinth was far from having ascertained the extent of his advance. He replied, however, with an earnestness with which he tried to make up as far as possible for his vagueness: “Well, I’m very strong indeed. I think I see my way to conclusions, from which even Monsieur and Madame Poupin would shrink. Poupin, at any rate; I’m not so sure about his wife.”