“Surely you know your wife as well as I,” she replied, in Italian, which she evidently spoke with facility, though with a strong guttural accent. “I have been talking with her: that is what has made me keep you. I have urged her to see you. I have told her that this could do no harm and would pledge her to nothing. But you know your wife,” Madame Grandoni repeated, with a smile which was now distinctly facetious. Prince Casamassima looked down at his boots. “How can one ever know a person like that? I hoped she would see me for five minutes.” “For what purpose? Have you anything to propose?” “For what purpose? To rest my eyes on her beautiful face.” “Did you come to England for that?” “For what else should I have come?” the Prince inquired, turning his blighted gaze to the opposite side of South Street. “In London, such a day as this, _già_,” said the old lady, sympathetically. “I am very sorry for you; but if I had known you were coming I would have written to you that you might spare yourself the pain.” The Prince gave a low, interminable sigh. “You ask me what I wish to propose. What I wish to propose is that my wife does not kill me inch by inch.” “She would be much more likely to do that if you lived with her!” Madame Grandoni cried. “_Cara signora_, she doesn’t appear to have killed you,” the melancholy nobleman rejoined. “Oh, me? I am past killing. I am as hard as a stone. I went through my miseries long ago; I suffered what you have not had to suffer; I wished for death many times, and I survived it all. Our troubles don’t kill us, Prince; it is we who must try to kill them. I have buried not a few. Besides Christina is fond of me, God knows why!” Madame Grandoni added. “And you are so good to her,” said the Prince, laying his hand on her fat, wrinkled fist. “_Che vuole?_ I have known her so long. And she has some such great qualities.” “Ah, to whom do you say it?” And Prince Casamassima gazed at his boots again, for some moments, in silence. Suddenly he inquired, “How does she look to-day?” “She always looks the same: like an angel who came down from heaven yesterday and has been rather disappointed in her first day on earth!” The Prince was evidently a man of a simple nature, and Madame Grandoni’s rather violent metaphor took his fancy. His face lighted up for a moment, and he replied with eagerness, “Ah, she is the only woman I have ever seen whose beauty never for a moment falls below itself. She has no bad days. She is so handsome when she is angry!” “She is very handsome to-day, but she is not angry,” said the old lady. “Not when my name was announced?” “I was not with her then; but when she sent for me and asked me to see you, it was quite without passion. And even when I argued with her, and tried to persuade her (and she doesn’t like that, you know), she was still perfectly quiet.” “She hates me, she despises me too much, eh?” “How can I tell, dear Prince, when she never mentions you?” “Never, never?”