And whatever you do hear, remember this: I was
sincere!"
Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a
good deal of simple compassion as a part of that "world" against which
Christina had launched her mysterious menace. It was obvious that he
was a good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be
a positively bad husband; but his distinguished inoffensiveness only
deepened the infelicity of Christina's situation by depriving her
defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice. So long as she had
been free to choose, she had esteemed him: but from the moment she was
forced to marry him she had detested him. Rowland read in the young
man's elastic Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and
as he found there also a record of other curious things--of pride, of
temper, of bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive
traditions--he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two
companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.
"You are going to Naples?" Rowland said to the prince by way of
conversation.
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