"That costs you little to say.If you had left your precious young meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a world of distress!""Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland.
"You came and disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio.""In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him.""I have done my best."
"I wish, then, you would take him away.You have plenty of money.
Do me a favor.Take him to travel.Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo.
Then, when Christina is Princess Casamassima," Mrs.Light added in a moment, "he may come back if he chooses.""Does she really care for him?" Rowland asked, abruptly.
"She thinks she does, possibly.She is a living riddle.
She must needs follow out every idea that comes into her head.
Fortunately, most of them don't last long; but this one may last long enough to give the prince a chill.If that were to happen, I don't know what I should do! I should be the most miserable of women.
It would be too cruel, after all I 've suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years blighted by a caprice.
For I can assure you, sir," Mrs.Light went on, "that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the credit is mine."Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious.
He saw that the lady's irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and he assumed designedly the attitude of a zealous auditor.She began to retail her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her disappointments, in the cause of her daughter's matrimonial fortunes.
It was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince continued to pass to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses.
Mrs.Light evidently, at an early period, had gathered her maternal hopes into a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and treated like a sort of fetish.
They had been her religion; she had none other, and she performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the light of day.
The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated, so thrust in and out of its niche, so passed from hand to hand, so dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by this time much of its early freshness, and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity.
But it was still brought forth in moments of trouble to have its tinseled petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar.
Rowland observed that Mrs.Light had a genuine maternal conscience;she considered that she had been performing a sacred duty in bringing up Christina to set her cap for a prince, and when the future looked dark, she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person.
This conscience upside down presented to Rowland's fancy a real physical image; he was on the point, half a dozen times, of bursting out laughing.
"I don't know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs.Light, "and I don't care! I have had one for the last fifteen years.
People have laughed at it, but they have n't laughed me out of it.
It has been everything to me.I could n't have lived without it.
One must believe in something! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old.I remember the day and the place, as if it were yesterday.She was a very ugly baby;for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her, and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her.
She had an Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow up pretty.I could n't believe her;I used to contradict her, and we were forever squabbling.
I was just a little silly in those days--surely I may say it now--and I was very fond of being amused.If my daughter was ugly, it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of amusement.
People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl;if it was so, I 've made up for it since.One day I went to drive on the Pincio in very low spirits.A trusted friend had greatly disappointed me.While I was there he passed me in a carriage, driving with a horrible woman who had made trouble between us.
I got out of my carriage to walk about, and at last sat down on a bench.I can show you the spot at this hour.
While I sat there a child came wandering along the path--a little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed in crimson and orange.She stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her queer little dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one of these contadine.
At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself, 'Bless me, what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a magnificent head of hair! If my poor Christina were only like that!' The child turned away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me.All of a sudden I gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms, and covered it with kisses.
It was Christina, my own precious child, so disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in making for her, that her own mother had not recognized her.
She knew me, but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked so angry.Of course my face was sad.
I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home post-haste, pulled off her rags, and, as I may say, wrapped her in cotton.
I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a priceless treasure! Every day, after that, the certainty grew.
From that time I lived only for my daughter.I watched her, I caressed her from morning till night, I worshipped her.
I went to see doctors about her, I took every sort of advice.
