too good, he ’s a saint of saints, he ’s stupidly good!  There is n’t such another in the length and breadth of Europe.  What he has been through in this house, not a common peasant would endure.  Christina has treated him as you would n’t treat a dog.  He has been insulted, outraged, persecuted!  He has been driven hither and thither till he did n’t know where he was.  He has stood there where you stand—­there, with his name and his millions and his devotion—­as white as your handkerchief, with hot tears in his eyes, and me ready to go down on my knees to him and say, ’My own sweet prince, I could kiss the ground you tread on, but it is n’t decent that I should allow you to enter my house and expose yourself to these horrors again.’  And he would come back, and he would come back, and go through it all again, and take all that was given him, and only want the girl the more!  I was his confidant; I know everything.  He used to beg my forgiveness for Christina.  What do you say to that?  I seized him once and kissed him, I did!  To find that and to find all the rest with it, and to believe it was a gift straight from the pitying angels of heaven, and then to see it dashed away before your eyes and to stand here helpless—­oh, it ’s a fate I hope you may ever be spared!”

“It would seem, then, that in the interest of Prince Casamassima himself I ought to refuse to interfere,” said Rowland.

Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes.  The intensity of her grief and anger gave her a kind of majesty, and Rowland, for the moment, felt ashamed of the ironical ring of his observation.  “Very good, sir,” she said.  “I ’m sorry your heart is not so tender as your conscience.  My compliments to your conscience!  It must give you great happiness.  Heaven help me!  Since you fail us, we are indeed driven to the wall.  But I have fought my own battles before, and I have never lost courage, and I don’t see why I should break down now.  Cavaliere, come here!”

Giacosa rose at her summons and advanced with his usual deferential alacrity.  He shook hands with Rowland in silence.

“Mr. Mallet refuses to say a word,” Mrs. Light went on.  “Time presses, every moment is precious.  Heaven knows what that poor boy may be doing.  If at this moment a clever woman should get hold of him she might be as ugly as she pleased!  It ’s horrible to think of it.”

The Cavaliere fixed his eyes on Rowland, and his look, which the night before had been singular, was now most extraordinary.  There was a nameless force of anguish in it which seemed to grapple with the young man’s reluctance, to plead, to entreat, and at the same time to be glazed over with a reflection of strange things.

Suddenly, though most vaguely, Rowland felt the presence of a new element in the drama that was going on before him.  He looked from the Cavaliere to Mrs. Light, whose eyes were now quite dry, and were fixed in stony hardness on the floor.