ve taken to your bed in this fashion?"

"Extremes meet! I can't get up for joy."

"May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?--from Miss Light
herself?"

"By no means. It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as
well."

"Casamassima's loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?"

"I don't talk about certainties. I don't want to be arrogant, I don't
want to offend the immortal gods. I 'm keeping very quiet, but I can't
help being happy. I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time."

"And then?"

"And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she threw
overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!"

"I feel bound to tell you," was in the course of a moment Rowland's
response to this speech, "that I am now on my way to Mrs. Light's."

"I congratulate you, I envy you!" Roderick murmured, imperturbably.

"Mrs. Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter, with whom
she has taken it into her head that I have influence. I don't know to
what extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you notice I shall not speak
in your interest."

Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes. "Pray
don't!" he simply answered.

"You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow."

"My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you. You 're
incapable of doing anything disloyal."

"You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your
visions, and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with
anxiety?"

"Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used
to it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least
forbear to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for
the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I
should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I
lock myself up as a dangerous character."

"Well, I can only say, 'May your pleasure never grow less, or your
danger greater!'"

Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose. "God's will be
done!"

On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs. Light's. This
afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him. Since the Cavaliere's report
of her condition she had somewhat smoothed and trimmed the exuberance
of her distress, but she was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she
clutched Rowland by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes,
he were her single floatin