Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 12
XII
He turned his face upward to the parasol of the great pine, closed his eyes and in a short time forgot his hard argument. January though it was, the mild stillness seemed to vibrate with faint midsummer sounds. Rowland sat vaguely attentive; he wished that for their common comfort the paste of Roderick's composition had had a certain softer ductility. It was like something that had dried to colour, to brilliancy; but had n't it also dried to brittleness? Suddenly, to his musing sense, the soft atmospheric hum was overscored with distincter sounds. He heard voices beyond a mass of shrubbery at the turn of a neighbouring path. In a moment one of them began to seem familiar, and an instant later a large white poodle emerged into view, slowly followed by his mistress. Miss Light paused on seeing Rowland and his companion; but though the former perceived he was recognised she gave him no greeting. Presently she walked directly toward him; and then, as he rose and was on the point of rousing Roderick, she laid her finger on her lips and motioned him to forbear. She stood looking at the deep peace of Roderick's sleep.
"What delicious oblivion!" she said. "Happy man! Stenterello"—and she pointed to his face—"wake him up!"
The poodle extended a long pink tongue and began to lick Roderick's cheek.
"Why," asked Rowland, "if he's happy?"
"Oh, I want companions in misery! Besides, I want to show off my dog." Roderick roused himself, sat up and unconfusedly stared. By this time Mrs. Light had approached, walking with a gentleman on each side of her. One of these was the Cavaliere Giacosa, the other was Prince Casamassima. "I should have liked to lie down on the grass and go to sleep," Christina added. "But it would have been unheard of."
"Oh, not quite," said the Prince in English, with a fine acquired distinctness. "There was already a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!"
"Charming!" cried Mrs. Light. "Do you hear that, my dear?"
"When the Prince says a brilliant thing it would be a pity to lose it," said the girl. "Your servant, sir!" And she smiled at him with a grace that might have reassured him if he had thought her compliment ambiguous.
Roderick meanwhile had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to exclaim on the oddity of their meeting and to set forth how, the day being lovely, she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the country. And who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr. Hudson asleep under a tree?
"Oh, I beg your pardon; I was very wide awake," said Rowland.
"Don't you know that Mr. Mallet 's Mr. Hudson's sheep-dog?" asked Christina. "He was mounting guard to keep away the wolves."
"To indifferent purpose, madam!" said Rowland, indicating to Mrs. Light her daughter.
"Is that the way you spend your time?" Christina demanded of Roderick. "I never yet happened to learn what men were doing when they supposed women were not watching them, but it was some thing vastly below their reputation."
"When, pray," said Roderick, smoothing his ruffled locks, "are women not watching them?"
"We shall give you something better to do at any rate. How long have you been here? It 's an age since I 've seen you. We consider you as an old inhabitant, and expect you to play host and entertain us."
Roderick said that he could offer them nothing but to show them the great terrace and its view; and ten minutes later the little group was assembled there. Mrs. Light was extravagant in her satisfaction; Christina looked away at the Sabine mountains in silence. The Prince stood by, frowning at the raptures of the elder lady.
"This is nothing," he said at last. "My word of honour. Have you seen the terrace at San Gaetano?"
"Ah, that merveille," murmured Mrs. Light amorously. "I suppose it's magnificent!"
"It 's four hundred feet long, and paved with marble. And the view is a thousand times more beautiful than this. You see far away the blue, blue sea and the little smoke of Vesuvio!"
"Christina, love," cried Mrs. Light forthwith, "the Prince has a terrace four hundred feet long, all paved with marble!"
The Cavaliere gave a little cough and began to wipe his eye-glass.
"Stupendous!" said Christina. "To go from one end to the other the Prince must have out his golden coach." This was apparently an allusion to one of the other items of the young man's grandeur.
"You always laugh at me," said the Prince. "I know no more what to say."
She looked at him with a sad smile and shook her head. "No, no, dear Prince, I don't laugh at you. Heaven forbid! You 're much too serious an affair. I assure you I feel your importance. What did you inform us was the value of the hereditary diamonds of the Princess Casamassima?"
"Ah, you 're laughing at me yet!" said the young man, who had turned rather pale and stiff.
"It does n't matter," Christina went on. "We 've a note of it; mamma writes all those things down in a little book!"
"If you 're laughed at, dear Prince, at least it 's in company," said Mrs. Light caressingly; and she took his arm as if to combat his possible displacement under the shock of her daughter's sarcasm. But the Prince looked heavy-eyed at Rowland and Roderick, to whom the girl was turning, as if he had much rather his lot were cast with theirs.
"Is the villa inhabited?" Christina asked, pointing to the vast melancholy structure that rises above the terrace.
"Not privately," said Roderick. "It 's occupied by a Jesuits' college for little boys."
"Can women go in?"
"I 'm afraid not." And Roderick was struck with the picture. "Fancy the poor little devils looking up from their Latin declensions and seeing Miss Light shine down on them!"
"I should like to see the poor little devils, with their rosy cheeks and their long black gowns, and when they were pretty I should n't scruple to kiss them. But if I can't have that amusement I must have some other. We must n't stand planted on this enchanting terrace as if we were a row of flower-pots. We must dance, we must feast, we must do something romantic, poetic. Mamma has arranged, I believe, that we 're to go back to Frascati to lunch at the inn. I decree that we lunch here and send the Cavaliere back there to get the provisions! He can take the carriage, which is waiting below."
Miss Light carried out this programme with a high, light hand. The Cavaliere was summoned, and he stood to receive her commands, uncovered and his eyes cast down, as if she had been a princess addressing her majordomo. She, however, took him with friendly grace by his button-hole and called him a dear good old Family Friend for being always so obliging. Her spirits had risen with the occasion and she talked irresistible nonsense. "Bring the best they have," she said, "no matter if it ruins us! And if the best is very bad it will be all the more amusing. I shall enjoy seeing Mr. Mallet try to swallow it for propriety's sake. Mr. Hudson will say out like a man that it 's horrible stuff and that he 'll be choked first. Be sure you bring a dish of macaroni; the Prince must have the diet of the Neapolitan nobility. But I leave all that to you, my poor dear Family Friend; you know what 's good, and you get it so cheap. Only be sure, above all, you bring a guitar. Mr. Mallet will play us a tune, I 'll dance with Mr. Hudson, and mamma will pair off with the Prince, of whom she is so fond!"
And as she concluded her recommendations she patted her discreet old servitor tenderly on the shoulder. He gave Rowland a covert look charged with reminders—"Did n't I tell you she 's as good as she 's clever, and as clever as she 's beautiful?"
The Cavaliere returned with zealous speed, accompanied by one of the servants of the inn, who bore a basket containing the materials of a rustic luncheon. The porter of the villa was easily induced to furnish a table and half a dozen chairs, and the repast when set forth was pronounced a perfect success; not so good as to fail of an amusing disorder, nor yet so bad as to defeat the proper function of repasts. Christina continued to display the most charming animation and compelled Rowland to reflect privately that, think what one might of her, the harmonious gaiety of so splendid a creature would not have been an impression to be missed. Her good-humour was contagious. Roderick, who an hour before had been descanting on madness and suicide, commingled his laughter with her lightest sallies; Prince Casamassima stroked his young moustache and found a fine cool smile for everything; his neighbour, Mrs. Light, who had Rowland on the other side, made the friendliest confidences to each of the young men, and the Family Friend contributed to the general hilarity by the solemnity of his attention to his plate. As for Rowland, the spirit of kindly mirth prompted him to propose the health of this useful personage. A moment later he wished he had held his tongue, for although the toast was drunk with demonstrative goodwill the Cavaliere received it with a brief dignity of deprecation which suggested to Rowland that his diminished gentility but half relished honours that savoured possibly of patronage. To perform punctiliously his mysterious duties toward the two ladies, and to elude or to baffle observation on his own merits—this clearly exhausted the Family Friend's modest ambition. Rowland perceived that Mrs. Light, who was not always remarkable for tact, seemed to have divined his humour on this point. She touched her lips with her glass, but she said nothing gracious and she immediately gave another direction to the talk. The old man had brought no guitar, so that when the feast was over there was nothing to hold the little group together. Christina wandered away with Roderick to another part of the terrace; the Prince, whose smile had vanished, sat gnawing the head of his cane near Mrs. Light, and Rowland strolled apart with the Cavaliere, to whom he wished to address a friendly word of apology for the light he had played a moment over his preferred obscurity. The Cavaliere was a mine of information upon all Roman places and people; he told Rowland a number of curious anecdotes of which the ancient villa was more or less the subject. "If history could always be taught in this fashion!" thought Rowland. "It 's the ideal—strolling up and down on the very spot commemorated, hearing out-of-the-way anecdotes from deeply indigenous lips." At last, as they passed, Rowland observed the mournful physiognomy of Prince Casamassima, and glancing towards the other end of the terrace saw that Roderick and Christina had disappeared from view. The young man was sitting upright in an attitude, apparently habitual, of ceremonious rigidity; but his lower jaw had fallen and was propped up with his cane, and his dull dark eye was fixed upon the angle of the villa which had just eclipsed Miss Light and her companion. His features kept the odd rigour of their symmetry, and his expression was vacuous; but there was a lurking delicacy in his face which seemed to tell you that nature had been making Casamassimas for a great many centuries, and, though she adapted her mould to circumstances, had learned to mix her material to an extraordinary fineness and to perform the whole operation with a kind of insolent art. The Prince was stupid, Rowland suspected, but he imagined he was amiable, and he saw that, with his dim aspirations and alarms, he felt himself in charge of the very highest interests. Rowland touched his companion's arm and pointed to the melancholy nobleman.
"Why in the world does n't he go after her and insist on being noticed?"
"Oh, he's very proud!" said the Cavaliere.
"That 's all very well, but a gentleman who cultivates a passion for that young lady must be prepared to make sacrifices."
"He thinks he has already made a great many. He comes of a very great family—a race of princes who for endless generations have sought brides only with some correspondence of name and condition. But he 's—what do you call it?—very hard hit, and he would certainly stretch the point for Christina."
"Then it's she who won't stretch her point?"
"Ah, she's very proud too!" The Cavaliere was silent a moment, as if he were measuring the propriety of freedom. He seemed to have formed a high opinion of Rowland's discretion, for he presently continued: "It would be a great match, for she brings him neither a name nor a fortune—nothing but her wit and her beauty. But questa ragazza will receive no favours; I know her too well. She would rather have her beauty blasted than seem to care about the marriage, and if she ever accepts the Prince it will be only after she has kept him for months on his knees."
"But she does care about it," said Rowland, "and to bring him to his knees she 's working upon his jealousy by pretending to be interested in my friend Hudson. If you said more you would say that, eh?"
The Cavaliere's sagacity exchanged a glance with Rowland's. "By no means. Christina 's a drôle de fille. She has many romantic ideas. She would be quite capable of interesting herself seriously in a remarkable young man like your friend and doing her utmost to discourage a splendid suitor like the Prince. She would act sincerely and she would go very far. But it would be unfortunate for the remarkable young man," he added after a pause, "for at the last she 'd go back!"
"A drôle de fille indeed."
"She would accept the more brilliant parti. I can answer for it."
"And what would be the logic of her proceeding?"
"She would be forced. There would be circum stances, conditions, necessities, des raisons majeures. I can't tell you more."
"But this implies that the rejected suitor would come back to her. He might grow tired of waiting."
"Oh, this one 's good for almost anything. Look at him now." Rowland obeyed, and saw that the Prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was moving restlessly to and fro between the villa and the parapet of the terrace. Every now and then he consulted his watch. "In this country, you know," said the Cavaliere, "a young lady never goes walking alone with a beau jeune homme. It seems to him very strange."
"It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must be very much in love."
"Oh, he 'll overlook it. He 's just what you say."
"Who is this exemplary lover then; what is he?"
"A Neapolitan; of one of the oldest houses in Italy. He 's a prince in your English sense of the word; unlike most of his countrymen, even of the highest pretensions, he has a princely fortune, coming mostly from his great Sicilian property. He 's very young; he 's only just of age; he saw the signorina last winter in Naples. He fell in love with her from the first, but his family interfered, and an old uncle, a high ecclesiastic, a Cardinal probably of the next batch, hurried up to Naples, seized him and locked him up. Meantime he has passed his majority, and s'il ne fait pas de bêtises he won't have, in the exercise of his freedom, any one but himself to consider. His relations are moving heaven and earth to prevent his marrying Miss Light, and they 've sent us word that he forfeits this, that and the other if he takes his wife out of a certain line. I 've investigated the question and I find this but a fiction to frighten us. He 's perfectly untrammelled; but the estates are such that it 's no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands. It 's a rare case, among us, of unencumbered property. The Prince has been an orphan from his third year; he has therefore had a long minority and made no inroads upon his fortune. Besides, he 's very prudent and shrewd; I'm only afraid that some day he'll pull the purse-strings too tight. All these years his affairs have been in the hands of his reverend uncle, a man of wonderful head, who has managed them to perfection—paid off mortgages, planted forests, opened up mines. It is now a magnificent fortune; such a fortune as with his name would justify the young man in pretending to any alliance whatsoever. And he lays it all at the feet of that little person who 's wandering in yonder boschetto with a penniless artist."
"He 's certainly a phœnix of princes! The signora must be in the seventh heaven."
The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave. "The signora has a high esteem for his personal merit."
"Well, his personal merit," Rowland returned with a smile; "what name do you give to it?"
"Eh, Prince Casamassima 's a real gran' signore! He 's a very good young man. He 's not brilliant nor witty, but he won't let himself be made a fool of. He 's a faithful son of the Church—and it 's lucky for our friends that they too are children of the great Mother. He 's as you see him there: a young man without many ideas, but with a very firm grasp of a single one—the conviction that Prince Casamassima is a very great person, that he greatly honours any young lady by asking for her hand, and that things are going very strangely when the young lady turns her back upon him. The poor young man 's terribly puzzled. But I whisper to him every day 'Pazienza, Signor Principe!"
"So you firmly believe," said Rowland in conclusion, "that Miss Light will accept him just in time not to lose him?"
"I count upon it. She would fill a great position too perfectly to miss her destiny."
"And you hold that nevertheless, in the meanwhile, in allowing any sort of voice about it to my friend Hudson, she will have been acting in good faith?"
The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable smile. "Eh, caro signore, our young lady 's very romantic!"
"So much so, you intimate, that she'll eventually give way in consequence not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward pressure?"
"If everything else fails, there 's that resource. But it will be mysterious, as you say, and you need n't try to guess it. You won't make it out."
"It will be something then at least by which Miss Light will suffer?"
"Not too much, I hope."
"And the remarkable young man? I understand you that there necessarily can be nothing but disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses his heart to her?"
The Cavaliere hesitated. "He had better," he said in a moment, "go and pursue his studies in Florence. There are very fine antiques in the Uffizi."
Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, toward whom her noble companion had not yet retraced his restless steps. "That's right," she said; "sit down here; I 've something serious to say to you. I 'm going to talk to you as a friend. I want your assistance. In fact, you must help me; it 's your duty. Look at that unhappy young man."
"Yes, he seems unhappy."
"He's just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy, and owns one of the greatest properties, and he's pining away with love for my daughter."
"So the Cavaliere tells me."
"It 's none of the Cavaliere's business," said Mrs. Light sharply. "Such information should come from me. The Prince is pining, as I say; he 's consumed, he takes it very hard. It 's a real Italian passion: I know what that means!" And she rolled an eye which seemed to commune with the vividness of her own annals. "Meanwhile, if you please, my daughter 's hiding in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson. I could cry with rage."
"If things are as bad as that," said Rowland, "it seems to me that you should find nothing easier than to despatch the Cavaliere to bring the guilty couple back."
"Never in the world! My hands are tied. Do you know what my wretch of a girl would do? She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business—heaven forgive her!—and send me word that if she had a mind to she would roam the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and delivering such a message as that before the Prince! Think of a sane young woman making a mess of such a fortune! He would marry her to-morrow at six o'clock in the morning."
"It's certainly very sad," said Rowland.
"That costs you little to say! If you had left your precious young meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a world of worry."
"Ah, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland. "You came and knocked at poor Hudson's door."
"In an evil hour! I wish to goodness you would talk with him."
"I talk with him a great deal. He 's wonderful," said Rowland, "to talk with."
"I wish then that in common consideration you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me a favour. Take him to travel. Go to the East—go to Timbuctoo. Then, when my daughter has accepted her destiny and is settled to it," Mrs. Light added in a moment, "he may come back if he chooses!"
"Does she really care for him?" Rowland abruptly asked.
"The deuce knows whom she really cares for—even to me who have so known and so watched her she 's a living riddle. She has ideas of her own, and theories and views and inspirations, each of which is the best in the world until another is better. She 's perfectly sure about each, but they are fortunately so many that she can't be sure of any one very long. They may last all together, none the less, long enough to dish the Prince's patience, and if that were to happen I don't know what I should do. I should be the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after all I have suffered to make her what she is, to see the labour of years blighted by mere wicked perversity. For I can assure you, sir," Mrs. Light declared, "that if my daughter is the gifted creature you see, I deserve some of the credit of the creation."
Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious, for he saw that the poor woman's irritated nerves required the comfort of some accepted overflow and he assumed designedly the attitude of a person impressed by her sacrifices. She told him then the story of her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her disappointments, in this exalted cause of Christina's capture of a prize—such a prize as would really be the crown of such a fabric of visions. It was a wonderful rigmarole of strange confidences, and while it went on the Prince continued to pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses. Mrs. Light evidently at an early period had gathered her maternal and social appetites together into a sacred parcel, to which she said her prayers and burnt incense—which she treated generally as a sort of fetish. These things had been her religion; she had none other, and she performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the light of day. The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated, so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by this time much of its early freshness and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity. But it was still brought forth in moments of trouble, to have its tinselled petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar. Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had at the service of her tawdry ideal a conscience that worked in the most approved and most punctual fashion; she considered that she had been performing a pious duty in bringing up Christina to carry herself, "marked" very high and in the largest letters, to market; and when the future looked dark she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person. It made almost as much and as comically for the topsy-turvy as if he had seen the good stout lady herself stand on her head.
"I don't know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs. Light, "and I don't mind if you think they 're rubbish. I 've had one for the last fifteen years, and if people have often laughed at it they 've never laughed me out of it. It has been everything to me; I could n't have lived without it. One must believe in something, hang it! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old. I remember the day and the place as if it were yesterday. She was a very ugly baby—I give you that for a remarkable fact; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her, and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her. She had an Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow up pretty. I could n't believe her, I used to contradict her, and we were for ever squabbling. I was just a little foolish in those days—surely I may say it now—and I was very fond of being amused. If my daughter was ugly, at least it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had, I don't mind telling you, no lack of amusement. People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl; if I ever did I 've made up for it since. One day I went to drive on the Pincio—I was in very low spirits. A certain person—I need n't name him—had trifled with a confidence—a confidence that I had in short placed: oh my dear, but placed! While I was there he passed me in a carriage, driving with a horrible woman who had made trouble between us. I got out of my carriage to walk about and at last sat down on a bench. I can show you the spot at this hour. While I sat there a child came wandering along the path—a little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed, in all the colours of the rainbow. She stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her queer little dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one of these contadine. At last I looked up at her face and said to myself: 'Bless me, what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a magnificent head of hair! If my poor little Christina were only like that!' The child turned away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me. All of a sudden I gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms, covered it with kisses. It was Christina, my own precious child, so disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in making for her that her own mother had n't recog nised her! She knew me, but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked so angry. Oh, of course, after what I had seen, the poor face of me, off my guard, must have told things! I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home post haste, pulled off her rags and, as I may say, wrapped her up in velvet and ermine. I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a priceless treasure! Every day after that the certainty grew. From that time I lived only for my daughter. I watched her, I fondled her from morning till night, I worshipped her. I went to see doctors about her. I took every sort of advice. I was determined she should be perfection. The things that have been done for that girl, sir—you would n't believe them; they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told that she must have every morning a bath of millefleurs, at fifty francs a pint, I would have found means to give it to her. She never raised a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked, she slept upon flowers. She never was out of my sight, and from that day to this I 've never said a nasty word to her. By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel, and so noticed, wherever we went, that I had to make her wear a veil like a woman of twenty. Her hair reached down to her feet, her hands were the hands of an empress. Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful and that she had only to play her cards. She had masters, professors, every educational advantage. They told me she was a little prodigy. She speaks French, Italian, German, better than most natives. She has a wonderful genius for music and might make her fortune as a pianist if it were not made for her otherwise. I travelled all over Europe, every one told me she was a marvel. The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child's party at Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her educated for the ballet. I said 'No, I thank you, sir; she 's meant to be something better than a princesse de théâtre.' I had a passionate belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be a princess of the first water. I 've never given it up, and I can assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments. Financial, some of them; I don't mind confessing that. I 've raised money on that girl's face! I 've taken her to the Jews and bidden her put off her veil and let down her hair, show her teeth, her shoulders, her arms, all sorts of things, and asked if the mother of that young lady was n't safe! She of course was too young to understand me. And yet, as a child, you would have said she knew what was in store for her; before she could read she had the manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little queen. She would have nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of her frocks she was seized with a kind of frenzy—she would tear it to pieces. At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played at romps and kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones. I 've gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a sign—a symbol—a pledge. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n't such things happened again and again without half so good a cause, and does n't history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago! . . . The Empress, certainly, was a pretty woman; but what 's my Christina, pray? I 've dreamt of it sometimes every night for a month. I won't tell you I 've been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers; you 'll call me an old portière. Portière as much as you please, when I certainly would scrub floors for her! I 've refused magnificent offers because I believed that somehow or other—if wars and revolutions were needed to bring it about—we should have nothing less than that. There might be another coup d'etat somewhere, and another brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife! At last, however," Mrs. Light proceeded with incomparable gravity, "since the overturning of the poor king of Naples and that charming queen, and the expulsion of all those dear little old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the dreadful radical talk that 's going on all over the world, it has come to seem to me that with Christina in such a position I should be really very nervous. Even in such a position she would hold her head very high, and if anything should happen to her she would make no concessions to the popular fury. The best thing, if one would be prudent, seems to be a nobleman of the highest possible rank short of belonging to a reigning stock. There you see one striding up and down, looking at his watch and counting the minutes till my daughter reappears!"
Rowland listened to all this with a large compassion for the heroine of the tale. What an education, what a history, what a school of character and of morals! He looked at the Prince and wondered whether he too had heard Mrs. Light's story. If he had he was a brave man. "I certainly hope you 'll nail him," he said to Mrs. Light. "You 've played a dangerous game with your daughter; it would be a pity not to win. But there 's hope for you yet; here she comes at last!"
Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her companion with the same Olympian command of the air, as it were, not less than of the earth, with which she had departed. Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek which she had not carried away with her, and there was certainly a light in Roderick's eyes that he had not seen there for a week.
"Bless my soul, how they're all looking at us!" she cried as they advanced. "One would think we were prisoners of the Inquisition!" And she paused and glanced from the Prince to her mother and from Rowland to the Cavaliere, and then threw back her head and burst into far-ringing laughter. "What is it, pray? Have I been very improper? Am I ruined for ever? Dear Prince, you 're looking at me as if I had committed the unpardonable sin!"
"I myself," said the Prince, "would never have ventured to ask you to walk with me alone in the country for an hour!"
"The more fool you, dear Prince—as I should say if I were vulgar and rude. Our walk has been awfully interesting. I hope you, on your side, have enjoyed each other's society."
"My dear daughter," said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined son-in-law, "I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach home. We 'll go back to the carriage."
"Something serious! Decidedly it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson, stand firm and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr. Mallet I see also," Christina added, "has something serious to say to me!"
Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his lately-stirred pity in his eyes. "Possibly," he said. "But it must be for some other time."
"I'm always, you know, at your service. I see our innocent gaiety is gone. And I only wanted to be amiable! Try to go in for an artless ease! It's very discouraging. Cavaliere, you alone don't look as if you wanted to bite me; from your dear old stupid face, at least, there 's no telling what you think. Give me your arm and take me away."
The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in the grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends farewell. Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes; a manœuvre for which Rowland imagined the Prince was grateful, as it enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his attitude of distinguished disapproval.
Rowland found himself roused from sleep early the next morning to see Roderick standing before him dressed for departure, his bag in his hand. "I 'm off," he said—"I'm for work again. An idea has come to me, by a miracle, and I must try to set it up while I have it. Addio!" And he went by the first train. Rowland followed at his ease.