Madame Grandoni hastily wondered if she had not better tell him (as it would prepare him for the worst) that his wife cared about as much for his name as for any old label on her luggage; but after an instant’s reflexion she reserved this information for another hour. Besides, as she said to herself, the Prince ought already to know perfectly to what extent Christina attached the idea of an obligation or an interdict to her ill-starred connexion with an ignorant and superstitious Italian race whom she despised for their provinciality, their parsimony and their futility (she thought their talk the climax of childishness) and whose fatuous conception of their importance in the great modern world she had on various public occasions sufficiently riddled with her derision. She finally contented herself with remarking: “Dear Prince, your wife’s a very proud woman.” “Ah, how could my wife be anything else? But her pride’s not my pride. And she has such ideas; such opinions! Some of them are monstrous.” Madame Grandoni smiled. “She doesn’t think it so necessary to have them when you’re not there.” “Why then do you say that you enter into my fears—that you recognise the stories I’ve heard?” I know not whether the good lady lost patience with his pressure; at all events she broke out with a certain sharpness. “Understand this, understand this: Christina will never consider you—your name, your illustrious traditions—in any case in which she doesn’t consider herself much more!” The Prince appeared to study for a moment this somewhat ambiguous yet portentous phrase; then he slowly got up with his hat in his hand and walked about the room softly, solemnly, as if suffering from his long thin feet. He stopped before one of the windows and took another survey of South Street; then turning he suddenly asked in a voice into which he had evidently endeavoured to infuse a colder curiosity: “Is she admired in this place? Does she see many people?” “She’s thought very strange of course. But she sees whom she likes. And they mostly bore her to death!” Madame Grandoni conscientiously added. “Why then do you tell me this country pleases her?” The old woman left her place. She had promised Christina, who detested the sense of being under the same roof with her husband, that the latter’s visit should be kept within narrow limits; and this movement was intended to signify as kindly as possible that it had better terminate. “It’s the common people who please her,” she returned with her hands folded on her crumpled satin stomach and her ancient eyes, still keen for all comedy, raised to his face. “It’s the lower orders, the _basso popolo_.” “The _basso popolo_?” The Prince stared at this fantastic announcement. “The _povera gente_,” pursued his friend, amused at his dismay. “The London mob—the most horrible, the most brutal—?” “Oh, she wishes to raise them.” “After all, something like that’s no more than I had heard,” said the Prince gravely.