“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.
“You are an excellent girl!” he said, in a particular tone, and gave her his hand in farewell.
There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light’s apartment, the pride and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing visitor passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these Rowland found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted lady herself.
“Well, well?” she cried, seizing his arm. “Has she listened to you—have you moved her?”
“In Heaven’s name, dear madame,” Rowland begged, “leave the poor girl alone! She is behaving very well!”