you are so or not."

"I 'm like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder
excavated fresco: I am made to grin."

"Shall you come back here next winter?"

"Very probably."

"Are you settled here forever?"

"'Forever' is a long time. I live only from year to year."

"Shall you never marry?"

Rowland gave a laugh. "'Forever'--'never!' You handle large ideas. I
have not taken a vow of celibacy."

"Would n't you like to marry?"

"I should like it immensely."

To this she made no rejoinder: but presently she asked, "Why don't you
write a book?"

Rowland laughed, this time more freely. "A book! What book should I
write?"

"A history; something about art or antiquities."

"I have neither the learning nor the talent."

She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said she had supposed
otherwise. "You ought, at any rate," she continued in a moment, "to do
something for yourself."

"For myself? I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed to live
for himself"--

"I don't know how it seems," she interrupted, "to careless observers.
But we know--we know that you have lived--a great deal--for us."

Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words with a
little jerk.

"She has had that speech on her conscience," thought Rowland; "she has
been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her that now was her
time to make it and have done with it."

She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with
due solemnity. "You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel.
Mrs. Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels. Of course
Roderick has expressed himself. I have been wanting to thank you too; I
do, from my heart."

Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic
mask much more than the comic. But Miss Garland was not looking at him;
she had taken up her Murray again.

In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland
frequently saw her again in the evening. He was apt to spend half an
hour in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension on the slope of the
Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly with his mother, was present
on these occasions. Rowland saw him little at other times, and for
three weeks no observations passed between them on the subject of Mrs.
Hudson's advent. To Rowland's vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits
to proceed from the presence of the two ladies remained shrouded in