RODERICK HUDSON
picturesque curiosity. The Prince himself is, in his own way, almost that. I should like Mr. Hudson as something else. The world's idea of possible relations, either for man or woman, is so poor—there would be so many nice free ones. I wish he were even my brother, so that he could never talk to me of marriage. Then I could adore him. I would nurse him, I would wait on him and save him all disagreeable rubs and shocks. I 'm much stronger than he, and I would stand between him and the world. Indeed with Mr. Hudson for my brother I should be willing to live and die an old maid."
"Have you ever expressed to him these sentiments?"
"I dare say. I 've chattered to him like a magpie. If you wish I 'll put it to him formally so he 'll know à quoi s'en tenir."
"There's nothing I could wish less!" Rowland promptly replied. "The one thing I ask of you is to let him alone."
"Good," said the girl. "I make a note of it."
He was lingering there, weighing one impression against another, weighing sympathy against suspicion and feeling it sink the scale, when the curtain of a distant doorway was lifted and Mrs. Light passed across the room. She stopped half-way and rather grimly took in our interlocutors. Sniffing the air for the powder of the battle, she perhaps too much missed the scent as she moved away with a passionate toss of her drapery. Rowland's previous impression came back to him: he saw her somehow possessed of some obscure and odious, some wholly ungenerous advantage, a means of influence too base to be used save
409
