Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/453

 came out she had three lines of writing in her daughter's hand, which the Cavaliere was despatched with to the Prince. They overtook the young man in time, and when he reappeared he was delighted to dispense with further waiting. I don't know what he thought of the grand manner of his bride's amends to him; but that 's how I roughly reconstruct history."

"You mean her mother told her—?" The old lady wondered. "I don't really see the difference that that was to make to her."

"Well," said Rowland "it was to make the difference of her deciding that she could n't afford not really to place herself. I 've figured it out, you see. She had to knock under to a revelation—to an humiliation. She was shown that it was not for her to make conditions, but to thank her stars that there were none made for her. If she persisted she might find it coming to pass that there would be conditions, and the formal rupture—the rupture that the world would hear of and pry into—would then have proceeded from the Prince and not from her."

Madame Grandoni thought of these things. "But must n't Christina have long ago guessed?"

"Her mother appears to have been satisfied she had n't."

"People in this enlightened age don't mind that sort of thing," Madame Grandoni objected. "The old obloquy attaching to irregular birth is now mere stage convention and melodrama."

"Well, Christina has a taste for that—she was glad immediately to be able to see herself in a new 419