Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/187

 "He 's a very valuable dog indeed," the elder lady explained as a commentary to this striking plea. "He was presented to my daughter by a great Florentine personage."

"It's not for that I care about him. It's for himself. He 's a great Florentine personage."

"My precious love!" exclaimed the mother in deprecating accents, but with a significant glance at Rowland which seemed to bespeak his attention to the originality of her possessing a daughter who was herself so original.

Rowland remembered that when their unknown visitors had passed before them, in the Villa Ludovisi, with an effect that had remained oddly distinct in spite of the many revolving seasons, Roderick and he had exchanged conjectures as to their nationality and social quality. Roderick had declared that they were old-world people; but Rowland now needed no telling to feel that he might claim the elder lady as a fellow-countrywoman. She was a person of what is called a great deal of presence, with the faded traces, artfully revived here and there, of once brilliant beauty. Her young companion was therefore accountably fair, but Rowland mentally made the distinction that the mother was inordinately shallow and the daughter — also perhaps inordinately — deep. The mother had a fatuous countenance — a countenance Rowland felt himself make out to represent a fairly fantastic fatuity. The girl, in spite of her childish satisfaction in her poodle, was not a person of a feeble understanding. Rowland received an impression that for reasons of her own she was playing a part before 153