Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/451

 Rowland exhaled a long breath. "Married—this morning?"

"Married this morning, at seven o'clock, le plus tranquillement du monde, before three or four persons. The young couple left Rome an hour afterwards."

For some moments this seemed to him really terrible; the obscure little drama of which he had caught a glimpse had played itself almost violently out. He had believed that Christina would resist; that she had succumbed was a proof that the way taken with her had had some last dire directness. His excited vision followed her, with much blinking, into the world toward which she was rolling away with her unappreciated husband and her stifled ideal; but it must be confessed that if the first impulse of his compassion was for Christina the second was now for Prince Casamassima. Madame Grandoni acknowledged an extreme curiosity as to the secret springs of these strange doings—Casamassima's sudden dismissal, his still more sudden recall, the hurried private marriage. "Listen," said Rowland presently, "and I will tell you something." And he related in detail his last visit to Mrs. Light and his talk with this lady, with Christina, and with the Cavaliere.

"Good," she said; "it 's all very curious. But it 's a riddle, and I only half guess it."

"Well," said Rowland, "it 's all none of my business, and perhaps I see things melodramatically. But certain suppositions have taken shape in my mind which serve as answers to two or three riddles."

"It 's very true," Madame Grandoni replied, "that 417