In calling this young lady and her mamma “queer people,” Rowland but roughly expressed his sentiment.  They were so marked a variation from the monotonous troop of his fellow-country people that he felt much curiosity as to the sources of the change, especially since he doubted greatly whether, on the whole, it elevated the type.  For a week he saw the two ladies driving daily in a well-appointed landau, with the Cavaliere and the poodle in the front seat.  From Mrs. Light he received a gracious salute, tempered by her native majesty; but the young girl, looking straight before her, seemed profoundly indifferent to observers.  Her extraordinary beauty, however, had already made observers numerous and given the habitues of the Pincian plenty to talk about.  The echoes of their commentary reached Rowland’s ears; but he had little taste for random gossip, and desired a distinctly veracious informant.  He had found one in the person of Madame Grandoni, for whom Mrs. Light and her beautiful daughter were a pair of old friends.

“I have known the mamma for twenty years,” said this judicious critic, “and if you ask any of the people who have been living here as long as I, you will find they remember her well.  I have held the beautiful Christina on my knee when she was a little wizened baby with a very red face and no promise of beauty but those magnificent eyes.  Ten years ago Mrs. Light disappeared, and has not since been seen in Rome, except for a few days last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples.  Then it was you met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens.  When I first knew her she was the unmarried but very marriageable daughter of an old American painter of very bad landscapes, which people used to buy from charity and use for fire-boards.  His name was Savage; it used to make every one laugh, he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman.  He had married a horrible wife, an Englishwoman who had been on the stage.  It was said she used to beat poor Savage with his mahl-stick and when the domestic finances were low to lock him up in his studio and tell him he should n’t come out until he had painted half a dozen of his daubs.  She had a good deal of showy beauty.  She would then go forth, and, her beauty helping, she would make certain people take the pictures.  It helped her at last to make an English lord run away with her.  At the time I speak of she had quite disappeared.  Mrs. Light was then a very handsome girl, though by no means so handsome as her daughter has now become.  Mr. Light was an American consul, newly appointed at one of the Adriatic ports.  He was a mild, fair-whiskered young man, with some little property, and my impression is that he had got into bad company at home, and that his family procured him his place to keep him out of harm’s way.  He came up to Rome on a holiday, fell in love with Miss Savage, and married her on the spot.  He had not been married three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever knew