Christina
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
walk in the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and
delivering such a message as that before the prince! Think of a girl
wantonly making light of such a chance as hers! He would marry her
to-morrow, at six o'clock in the morning!"

"It is 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 distress!"

"Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland. "You came and
disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio."

"In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him."

"I have done my best."

"I wish, then, you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me
a favor. Take him to travel. Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo. Then, when
Christina is Princess Casamassima," Mrs. Light added in a moment, "he
may come back if he chooses."

"Does she really care for him?" Rowland asked, abruptly.

"She thinks she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs
follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of
them don't last long; but this one may last long enough to give the
prince a chill. 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 've suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years
blighted by a caprice. For I can assure you, sir," Mrs. Light went on,
"that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the
credit is mine."

Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious. He saw that the lady's
irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and
he assumed designedly the attitude of a zealous auditor. She began
to retail her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her
disappointments, in the cause of her daughter's matrimonial fortunes. It
was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, 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 hopes into
a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and
treated like a sort of fetish. They had been her religion; she ha