“I—­with her daughter?  Not a grain!”

“That is possibly your modesty.  Mrs. Light believes that something may yet be done, and that Christina will listen to you.  She begs you to come and see her before it is too late.”

“But all this, my dear Cavaliere, is none of my business,” Rowland objected.  “I can’t possibly, in such a matter, take the responsibility of advising Miss Light.”

The Cavaliere fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor, in brief but intense reflection.  Then looking up, “Unfortunately,” he said, “she has no man near her whom she respects; she has no father!”

“And a fatally foolish mother!” Rowland gave himself the satisfaction of exclaiming.

The Cavaliere was so pale that he could not easily have turned paler; yet it seemed for a moment that his dead complexion blanched.  “Eh, signore, such as she is, the mother appeals to you.  A very handsome woman—­disheveled, in tears, in despair, in dishabille!”

Rowland reflected a moment, not on the attractions of Mrs. Light under the circumstances thus indicated by the Cavaliere, but on the satisfaction he would take in accusing Christina to her face of having struck a cruel blow.

“I must add,” said the Cavaliere, “that Mrs. Light desires also to speak to you on the subject of Mr. Hudson.”

“She considers Mr. Hudson, then, connected with this step of her daughter’s?”

“Intimately.  He must be got out of Rome.”

“Mrs. Light, then, must get an order from the Pope to remove him.  It ’s not in my power.”

The Cavaliere assented, deferentially.  “Mrs. Light is equally helpless.  She would leave Rome to-morrow, but Christina will not budge.  An order from the Pope would do nothing.  A bull in council would do nothing.”

“She ’s a remarkable young lady,” said Rowland, with bitterness.

But the Cavaliere rose and responded coldly, “She has a great spirit.”  And it seemed to Rowland that her great spirit, for mysterious reasons, gave him more pleasure than the distressing use she made of it gave him pain.  He was on the point of charging him with his inconsistency, when Giacosa resumed:  “But if the marriage can be saved, it must be saved.  It ’s a beautiful marriage.  It will be saved.”

“Notwithstanding Miss Light’s great spirit to the contrary?”

“Miss Light, notwithstanding her great spirit, will call Prince Casamassima back.”

“Heaven grant it!” said Rowland.

“I don’t know,” said the Cavaliere, solemnly, “that heaven will have much to do with it.”

Rowland gave him a questioning look, but he laid his finger on his lips.  And with Rowland’s promise to present himself on the morrow at Casa Light, he shortly afterwards departed.  He left Rowland revolving many things:  Christina’s magnanimity, Christina’s perversity, Roderick’s contingent fortune, Mary Garland’s certain trouble, and the Cavaliere’s own fine ambiguities.