Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/21

 speak of should happen, that would be only the greater reason for your staying—that you might interpose,—that you might arrest' He stopped short; Madame Grandoni was laughing, with her Teutonic homeliness, in his face.

'You must have been in Rome, more than once, when the Tiber had overflowed, è vero? What would you have thought then if you had heard people telling the poor wretches in the Ghetto, on the Ripetta, up to their knees in liquid mud, that they ought to interpose, to arrest?'

'Capisco bene,' said the Prince, dropping his eyes. He appeared to have closed them, for some moments, as if a slow spasm of pain were passing through him. 'I can't tell you what torments me most,' he presently went on, 'the thought that sometimes makes my heart rise into my mouth. It's a haunting fear.' And his pale face and disturbed respiration might indeed have been those of a man before whom some horrible spectre had risen.

'You needn't tell me. I know what you mean, my poor friend.'

'Do you think, then, there is a danger—that she will drag my name, do what no one has ever dared to do? That I would never forgive,' said the young man, almost under his breath; and the hoarseness of his whisper lent a great effect to the announcement.

Madame Grandoni wondered for a moment whether she had not better tell him (as it would prepare him for the worst), that his wife cared about as much for his name as for any old label on her luggage; but after an instant's reflection she reserved this information for another hour. Besides, as she said to herself, the Prince ought already to know perfectly to what extent Christina attached the idea