Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/198

 "A strange school enough. But Mrs. Light told me in Florence that she had given her child the education of a princess. In other words I suppose she speaks three or four languages and has read several hundred French novels. Christina, I imagine, has plenty of wit—also plenty of will. When I saw her at that same time I was amazed at her beauty, and certainly if there be any truth in faces she ought to have the soul of an angel. Perhaps she has. I don't judge her; she 's an extraordinary young person. She has been told twenty times a day by her mother, since she was five years old, that she 's a beauty of beauties, that her face is her fortune, that she was born for great things, and that if she plays her cards she may marry God knows whom. If she has not been quite ruined she 's a very decent creature. My own impression is that, like the most interesting people always, she 's a mixture of better and worse, of good passions and bad — always of passions, however; and that, whatever she is, she 's neither stupid nor mean and possibly, by a miracle, not even false. Mrs. Light having failed to make her own fortune in matrimony, has transferred her hopes to her daughter and nursed them till they 've become a craze. She has a hobby, which she rides in secret; but some day she 'll let you see it. I 'm sure that if you go in some evening unannounced you 'll find her studying the tea-leaves in her cup or telling her daughter's fortune with a greasy pack of cards. She reminds me, like that, of some extravagant old woman in a novel—in something of Hofmann or Balzac, something even of your own Thackeray. 164