Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/197

 and unable to work. A subscription was shortly afterwards taken up among the foreigners, and he was sent back to America, where, as I finally heard, he died in some sort of asylum. From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely of Mrs. Light as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places. Once came a rumour that she was going to make a grand marriage in England; then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left her to keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained creature. She pretends to be a great lady—Dieu sait pourquoi!—but I consider that old Filomena, my washerwoman, is in essentials a greater one. Certainly, after all, however, she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on a lawsuit about some property with her husband's family, and went to America to attend to it. She came back triumphant, with a long purse. She reappeared in Italy and established herself for a while in Venice. Then she came to Florence, where she spent a couple of years and where I saw her. Last year she passed down to Naples, which I should have said was just the place for her, and this winter she has laid siege to Rome. She seems very prosperous. She has taken a floor in the Palazzo Falconieri, she keeps her carriage, and Christina and she, between them, must have a pretty milliner's bill. Giacosa has turned up again, looking like one of those collapsed balloons, that children play with, blown out again for the occasion."

"What sort of education," Rowland attentively asked, "do you suppose the mother's adventures to have been for the daughter?" 163