But Miss Grunderson was very happy this evening, for the delightful Roderick condescended to talk to her, while his brother was engrossed by Mrs. Tredethlyn. He was not very polite, but Rosa thought him positively charming. She had learnt to understand the emptiness of the attentions that had been paid to her by enterprising young bachelors, who thought that an alliance with the great Grunderson’s daughter would be a very pleasant starting-point on the high-road of life; but she did not understand that there might come a man wise enough to eschew vain flatteries and all the ordinary allurements of the vulgar fortune-hunter, and yet designing enough to spread his nets for any heiress worthy of his ambition. In his conversation with the simple-minded Rosa he affected the sentiments of a confirmed misogynist. “If there were such a possibility as a sensible woman,” he said, “I might perhaps hope to end my days in the bosom of a family; but since the age of miracles is past, I resign myself to the idea of remaining a lonely wanderer until the day of my death.” Thus, half in despondency, half in bitterness, Roderick Lowther replied to some leading remark of Miss Grunderson’s. She called him a horrid man and a dreadful creature: but she admired him amazingly notwithstanding, and she felt a seraphic happiness in listening to this delightful cynical being, to the utter neglect of Meyerbeer. “With the exception of public characters,” mused the market-gardener’s daughter, “I don’t think I was ever _really_ in love until now.” And thus it fell out that, when Mrs. Tredethlyn said, in the course of the evening, that she was going to spend the following day at Twickenham, Rosa gave such broad hints about the loveliness of the weather, and the delights of suburban scenery, that good-natured Maude promised to take her down for a long afternoon among the roses in the dear old garden where so much of her own happy youth had been idled away. “Are droppers-in to be permitted in your Arcadia, ladies?” demanded Harcourt; “and will the balls and mallets be considered out of place upon the lawn by the river?” This was quite enough for Miss Grunderson, who cried out directly that of all things in the world she admired croquet, and that “Par” had bought her a set of Cremer’s most exquisite walnut-wood balls and mallets. There were times when the vivacious Rosa called her indulgent parent “Par,” in spite of those half-dozen annual accounts which he had paid for the young lady’s education.