“Roderick,” said Rowland, “has great hopes.”

“Does he know of my rupture with the prince?”

“He is making a great holiday of it.”

Christina pulled her poodle towards her and began to smooth his silky fleece.  “I like him very much,” she repeated; “much more than I used to.  Since you told me all that about him at Saint Cecilia’s, I have felt a great friendship for him.  There ’s something very fine about him; he ’s not afraid of anything.  He is not afraid of failure; he is not afraid of ruin or death.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rowland, bitterly; “he is fatally picturesque.”

“Picturesque, yes; that ’s what he is.  I am very sorry for him.”

“Your mother told me just now that you had said that you did n’t care a straw for him.”

“Very likely!  I meant as a lover.  One does n’t want a lover one pities, and one does n’t want—­of all things in the world—­a picturesque husband!  I should like Mr. Hudson as something else.  I wish he were my brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage.  Then I could adore him.  I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all disagreeable rubs and shocks.  I am much stronger than he, and I would stand between him and the world.  Indeed, with Mr. Hudson for my brother, I should be willing to live and die an old maid!”

“Have you ever told him all this?”

“I suppose so; I ’ve told him five hundred things!  If it would please you, I will tell him again.”

“Oh, Heaven forbid!” cried poor Rowland, with a groan.

He was lingering there, weighing his sympathy against his irritation, and feeling it sink in the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room.  She stopped half-way, and gave the young persons a flushed and menacing look.  It found apparently little to reassure her, and she moved away with a passionate toss of her drapery.  Rowland thought with horror of the sinister compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected.  In this ethereal flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing; but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn.  She would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed gross to make further demands upon it on Roderick’s behalf.

Rowland took up his hat.  “You asked a while ago if I had come to help you,” he said.  “If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly glad.”

She stood silent a moment, reflecting.  Then at last, looking up, “You remember,” she said, “your promising me six months ago to tell me what you finally thought of me?  I should like you to tell me now.”

He could hardly help smiling.  Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one; and this little speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot.  She had played her great scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole in the curtain and she was watching the house!  But she blushed as she perceived his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault venial.