Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/199

 She promises the girl a prince—a reigning prince. But if Mrs. Light's a fool she can still count on her fingers, and lest considerations of state should deny her potentate the luxury of a love-match she keeps on hand a few common mortals. At the worst she would take a duke, an English lord, or even a young American with a proper number of millions. The poor woman can certainly never lie quiet, she 's unacquainted with the luxury of repose. She 's always building castles and knocking them down again—always casting her nets and pulling them in. If her daughter were less of a beauty her pretensions would be grotesque; but there 's something in the girl, as one looks at her, that seems to make it very possible she may be marked out for one of those romantic fortunes that history now and then relates. 'Who, after all, was the Empress of the French?' Mrs. Light is for ever saying. 'And beside Christina the Empress is a dowdy!"

"And what does Christina say?"

"She makes no scruple, as you know, of saying that she wouldn't mind her mother's idiocy if it was n 't for her vulgarity. What she 'thinks' goodness knows. I suspect that practically she doesn't commit herself. She 's excessively proud, and holds herself fit for the highest station in the world; but she knows that her mother would make her ridiculous if anything could, and that even she herself might look awkward in making unsuccessful advances. So she remains sublimely detached and lets mamma take the risks. If the prince is captured so much the better; if he 's not she need never confess 165