Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/78

 should be wanting in respect to her if he took it seriously or made a personal application of it. 'What I want is this,' he began, after a moment: 'that you will—that you will—' But he stopped before he had got further. She was watching him, listening to him, and she waited while he paused. It was a long pause, and she said nothing. 'Princess,' the old man broke out at last, 'I would give my own life many times for that boy's!'

'I always told him you must have been fond of him!' she cried, with bright exultation.

'Fond of him? Pray, who can doubt it? I made him, I invented him!'

'He knows it, moreover,' said the Princess, smiling. 'It is an exquisite organisation.' And as the old man gazed at her, not knowing, apparently, what to make of her tone, she continued: 'It is a very interesting opportunity for me to learn certain things. Speak to me of his early years. How was he as a child? When I like people I want to know everything about them.'

'I shouldn't have supposed there was much left for you to learn about our young friend. You have taken possession of his life,' the fiddler added, gravely.

'Yes, but as I understand you, you don't complain of it? Sometimes one does so much more than one has intended. One must use one's influence for good,' said the Princess, with the noble, gentle air of accessibility to reason that sometimes lighted up her face. And then she went on, irrelevantly: 'I know the terrible story of his mother. He told it me himself, when he was staying with me; and in the course of my life I think I have never been more affected.'