Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she might offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland was a figment of her fancy.  Miss Garland was engaged to another man, and he himself had no claims.

“Well, then,” said Madame Grandoni, “if I like her, we ’ll have it that you ought to be in love with her.  If you fail in this, it will be a double misdemeanor.  The man she ’s engaged to does n’t care a straw for her.  Leave me alone and I ’ll tell her what I think of you.”

As to Christina Light’s marriage, Madame Grandoni could make no definite statement.  The young girl, of late, had made her several flying visits, in the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial shopping and dress-fitting; she had spoken of the event with a toss of her head, as a matter which, with a wise old friend who viewed things in their essence, she need not pretend to treat as a solemnity.  It was for Prince Casamassima to do that.  “It is what they call a marriage of reason,” she once said.  “That means, you know, a marriage of madness!”

“What have you said in the way of advice?” Rowland asked.

“Very little, but that little has favored the prince.  I know nothing of the mysteries of the young lady’s heart.  It may be a gold-mine, but at any rate it ’s a mine, and it ’s a long journey down into it.  But the marriage in itself is an excellent marriage.  It ’s not only brilliant, but it ’s safe.  I think Christina is quite capable of making it a means of misery; but there is no position that would be sacred to her.  Casamassima is an irreproachable young man; there is nothing against him but that he is a prince.  It is not often, I fancy, that a prince has been put through his paces at this rate.  No one knows the wedding-day; the cards of invitation have been printed half a dozen times over, with a different date; each time Christina has destroyed them.  There are people in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away; they are in a dreadful fright about the fever, but they are dying to see the wedding, and if the day were fixed, they would make their arrangements to wait for it.  I think it very possible that after having kept them a month and produced a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married at midnight by an old friar, with simply the legal witnesses.”

“It is true, then, that she has become a Catholic?”

“So she tells me.  One day she got up in the depths of despair; at her wit’s end, I suppose, in other words, for a new sensation.  Suddenly it occurred to her that the Catholic church might after all hold the key, might give her what she wanted!  She sent for a priest; he happened to be a clever man, and he contrived to interest her.  She put on a black dress and a black lace veil, and looking handsomer than ever she rustled into the Catholic church.  The prince, who is very devout, and who had her heresy sorely on his conscience, was thrown into an ecstasy.  May she never have a caprice that pleases him less!”