Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/465

 Rowland's lately quickened interest in Christina had still its fine capacity to throb, and he felt that in loyalty to it as to an at least more enlightened view he must say a word for her. "You took her, I did think, too seriously at first," he remarked, "but you take her too harshly now. She had no idea of wronging or of so terribly upsetting you."

Roderick looked at him on this with eyes almost lurid. "She's a ministering angel then after all?—that's what you want to prove!" he cried. "That's consoling for me who have lost her! You 're always right, I say; but, my dear fellow, be, in mercy, just a little wrong for once!"

"Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, show a little mercy!" said Mrs. Hudson in a tone which, for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. This demonstration on his part covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension—a presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be capable of in the way of abrupt and perverse animosity. There was no space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching on top of it. She had evidently not penetrated at all, having no imagination for it whatever, the strange cloud of her son's personal situation. Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was darkness and trouble, and as his gained position, or what she had been deeming such, appeared quite to exceed her original measure and lift him beyond her jurisdiction, so that he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame, she found it infinitely 431