“I wonder if she knows that I”—he just hesitated, then went on—“spend almost nothing at all. But I’d rather live on dry bread than that in a country like this, in this great English society, she shouldn’t make a proper appearance.” “Her appearance is all you could wish. How can it help being proper with me to set her off?” “You’re the best thing she has, dear friend. So long as you’re with her I feel a certain degree of security; and one of the things I came for was to extract from you a promise that you won’t leave her.” “Ah, let us not tangle ourselves up with promises!” Madame Grandoni exclaimed. “You know the value of any engagement one may take with regard to the Princess; it’s like promising you I’ll stay in the bath when the hot water’s on. When I begin to be scalded I’ve to jump out—naked as I may naturally be. I’ll stay while I can, but I shouldn’t stay if she were to do certain things.” Madame Grandoni uttered these last words with a clear emphasis, and for a minute she and her companion looked deep into each other’s eyes. “What things do you mean?” “I can’t say what things. It’s utterly impossible to predict on any occasion what Christina will do. She’s capable of giving us great surprises. The things I mean are things I should recognise as soon as I saw them, and they would make me leave the house on the spot.” “So that if you’ve not left it yet—?” he asked with extreme eagerness. “It’s because I’ve thought I may do some good by staying.” He seemed but half content with this answer; nevertheless he said in a moment: “To me it makes all the difference. And if anything of the kind you speak of should happen, that would be only the greater reason for your staying.—You might interpose, you might arrest—” He stopped short before her large Germanic grimace. “You must have been in Rome more than once when the Tiber had overflowed, _è vero_? What would you have thought then if you had heard people telling the poor wretches in the Ghetto, on the Ripetta, up to their knees in liquid mud, that they ought to interpose, to arrest?” “_Capisco bene_,” said the Prince, dropping his eyes. He appeared to have closed them, for some moments, as if under a slow spasm of pain. “I can’t tell you what torments me most,” he presently went on—“the thought that sometimes makes my heart rise into my mouth. It’s a haunting fear.” And his pale face and disturbed respiration might indeed have been those of a man before whom some horrible spectre had risen. “You needn’t tell me. I know what you mean, my poor friend.” “Do you think then there _is_ a danger—that she’ll drag my name, do what no one has ever dared to do? That I’d never forgive,” he declared almost under his breath; and the hoarseness of his whisper lent it a great effect.