Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/445

 these he found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted mistress of the house.

"Well, well?" she cried, seizing his arm. "Has she listened to you—have you moved her?"

"Hadn't you better, dear madam," Rowland rather ruefully asked, "leave the poor girl alone? She 's doing—for herself, I mean—the best she can."

"For herself?" the wretched woman shrieked. "Is that what I asked you to find out?—as if we did n't know enough about it! Pray, what is she doing for me and for him?—and what have you been doing for either of us?" And then as he had nothing but his blankness to show her she turned upon him with fury. "I believe you came, perfidiously, but to back her up, and you 're conspiring with her to kill me."

Rowland tried for a moment, with small taste for the job, to appease her unreason and persuade her that if she would stay her wrath she might gain something by patience. This however, too visibly, was a counsel of perfection, and she broke away from him in undiminished disgust, leaving him to come an instant later upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried in thought that he had to call him before he roused himself. The poor gentleman's eyes then charged themselves heavily with his question, but Rowland could again only throw up his hands. "Mrs. Light, all the same, seems to have an idea she can still do something; so that if you believe in Mrs. Light's idea—!" 411