issives, which cost Roderick
unconscionable sums in postage. He received punctual answers of a more
frugal form, written in a clear, minute hand, on paper vexatiously thin.
If Rowland was present when they came, he turned away and thought of
other things--or tried to. These were the only moments when his
sympathy halted, and they were brief. For the rest he let the days go by
unprotestingly, and enjoyed Roderick's serene efflorescence as he would
have done a beautiful summer sunrise. Rome, for the past month, had been
delicious. The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and sunny
leisure seemed to brood over the city.

Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento
of the great Juno. Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel, and the
young men, looking up, saw three persons advancing. One was a woman
of middle age, with a rather grand air and a great many furbelows. She
looked very hard at our friends as she passed, and glanced back over her
shoulder, as if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed
her. She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she
must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in
a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly
buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a
pair of soiled light gloves. He was a grotesque-looking personage,
and might have passed for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by
adversity to playing cicerone to foreigners of distinction. He had a
little black eye which glittered like a diamond and rolled about like a
ball of quicksilver, and a white moustache, cut short and stiff, like a
worn-out brush. He was smiling with extreme urbanity, and talking in a
low, mellifluous voice to the lady, who evidently was not listening
to him. At a considerable distance behind this couple strolled a young
girl, apparently of about twenty. She was tall and slender, and dressed
with extreme elegance; she led by a cord a large poodle of the most
fantastic aspect. He was combed and decked like a ram for sacrifice; his
trunk and haunches were of the most transparent pink, his fleecy head
and shoulders as white as jeweler's cotton, and his tail and ears
ornamented with long blue ribbons. He stepped along stiffly and solemnly
beside his mistress, with an air of conscious elegance. There was
something at first slightly ridiculous in the sight of a young lady
gravely