RODERICK HUDSON
manifested as he felt it his sense of the honour Rowland had done him.
"I 'm always on service with these ladies, you see, and that 's a duty to which one would n't willingly be faithless an instant."
"Evidently," said Rowland, "you 're a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light, in her situation, is very happy to be able so to depend on you."
"We are old friends," the Cavaliere gravely said. "Very good friends. I knew the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest woman in Rome—or rather in Ancona, which is even better. The beautiful Christina now is perhaps the very greatest beauty in Europe."
"There's nothing more probable."
"Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to touch the piano." And at these faded memories the Cavaliere's eyes glowed with an old Roman fire. Rowland half expected him to proceed with a flash of long-repressed passion, "And now—and now, sir, they treat me as you observed the other day!" But he only looked out at our friend hard from among his wrinkles, and seemed to remark instead, as with the social discipline of a thousand years, "Oh, I say nothing more. I 'm neither so vulgar nor so shallow as to complain!"
Evidently the Cavaliere was both deep and delicate, and Rowland could but repeat his respectful tribute. "You 're a devoted friend."
"Eh, che vuole? I 'm a devoted friend. A man may do himself justice after twenty years!"
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