really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle.
Looked at in that way she is certainly very much to be pitied, and
indeed, altogether, though I don't think she either means all she says
or, by a great deal, says all that she means. I feel very sorry for
her."

Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments,
and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendrissement. He
imagined more than once that there had been a passionate scene between
them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found
effective. But Christina's face told no tales, and she moved about,
beautiful and silent, looking absently over people's heads, barely
heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the
soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body
of a goddess. "Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is
twenty," observers asked, "to have left all her illusions behind?" And
the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she
was intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was
not conceded were free to reflect that she was "not at all liked."

It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this
conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and, in especial,
with the spectacle of Roderick's inveterate devotion. All Rome might
behold that he, at least, "liked" Christina Light. Wherever she
appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was
perpetually at her side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of
a disconnected talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face,
profoundly immaterial to the young lady. People in general smiled at the
radiant good faith of the handsome young sculptor, and asked each other
whether he really supposed that beauties of that quality were meant to