RODERICK HUDSON
done, that she likes drama, likes theatricals—what do you call them?—histrionics, for their own sweet sake. She 's certain to do every now and then something disinterested and sincere, something for somebody else than herself. She needs to think well of herself; she knows a fine character easily when she meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison, even though the comparison be made by herself alone; and when the figure she makes, to her own imagination, ceases to please or to amuse her she has to do something to smarten it up and give it a more striking turn. But of course she must always do that at somebody's expense—not one of her friends but must sooner or later pay, and the best of them doubtless the oftenest. Her attitudes and pretences may sometimes worry one, but I think we have most to pray to be guarded from her sincerities. Those are the prickles, after all, that she most turns upon her mother—and that she will turn yet upon her husband. But we mustn't, all the same," Madame Grandoni concluded, "give her up. Don't you!" she said with some emphasis to Rowland.
"Oh me!" he simply sighed: "I 'm prickle-proof!"
His sagacious friend came the next day to call on the two ladies from Northampton. She carried their shy affections by storm and made them promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow. Her visit was an epoch in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing but make sudden desultory allusions to her for the next thirty-six hours. "To think of her being a foreigner!" she would exclaim after much intent reflexion over her knitting; "she speaks
369
