Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/402

 's quite capable of giving it some wrong turn, of spoiling somehow its beauty; but there 's no position in the world that would be sacred to her. The Prince is an irreproachable young man; there 's nothing against him, nothing inconvenient about him but that his name is, in his opinion, something to live up to. It 's not often, I fancy, that a personage wearing it has been put through his paces at this rate. No one knows the wedding-day; the cards of invitation have been printed half a dozen times over with a different date; each time Christina has destroyed them. There are people in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away; they 're in a dreadful fright about the fever-season, but they 're dying to see the wedding, and if the day were fixed they would make their arrangements to wait for it. I think it very possible that after having kept them for a month and been the cause of a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married at sunrise by an old friar—in Romeo and Juliet fashion—and with simply the legal witnesses."

Rowland brooded a while. "I feel as if we had still to reckon with her."

"Do you mean," his friend asked, "that she may even yet run away with Mr. Hudson?"

It was more than he had meant, but it had struck him the next minute as not perhaps more than might be. "I 'm prepared for anything!"

"Do you mean that Mr. Hudson's ready?"

"Do you think she is?" Rowland asked.

"I think they're a precious pair—and yet that one has n't said all when one says, as I have so often 368