RODERICK HUDSON
would endure. Christina has treated him as you would n't treat a dog. He has been dealt with as if to see how much of it he would take. 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. He opened himself to me as he might to his mother in heaven, and it 's not too much to say that we lived through everything together. He used to beg my own forgiveness for her worst caprices. What do you say to that? I seized him once and kissed him hard, I verily did! To find that and to find all the rest with it, and to believe that luck was at last, in spite of everything, on my side, and then to see it dashed away before my 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," Rowland presently said.
Mrs. Light looked at him hard, slowly drying her eyes. The magnificence of her woe gave her a kind of majesty, and Rowland for the moment felt ashamed of the somewhat grim humour of his observation. "Very good, sir," she said. "I 'm sorry your heart
400
