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 mystery. Roderick was peculiarly inscrutable. He was preoccupied with his work on his mother’s portrait, which was taking a very happy turn; and often, when he sat silent, with his hands in his pockets, his legs outstretched, his head thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to be supposed that his fancy was hovering about the half-shaped image in his studio, exquisite even in its immaturity. He said little, but his silence did not of necessity imply disaffection, for he evidently found it a deep personal luxury to lounge away the hours in an atmosphere so charged with feminine tenderness. He was not alert, he suggested nothing in the way of excursions (Rowland was the prime mover in such as were attempted), but he conformed passively at least to the tranquil temper of the two women, and made no harsh comments nor sombre allusions. Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his friend injustice in denying him the sentiment of duty. He refused invitations, to Rowland’s knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little table-d’hote; wherever his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh with religious constancy. Mrs. Hudson’s felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown. Her