“Not to all--heaven forbid!” cried Mrs. Light. “But to a number that I have had pointed out by artistic friends. I delight in studios: they are the temples of the beautiful here below. And if you are a novice, Mr. Hudson,” she went on, “you have already great admirers. Half a dozen people have told us that yours were among the things to see.” This gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across to the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light. “Ah, he ‘s gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that has had his head turned,” Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate. “The artists are all crazy about her. When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the pictures. And when she goes into a ball-room what do the other women say? Eh, Cavaliere?” “She is very beautiful,” Rowland said, gravely. Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little at everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot. She looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as a feature of Roderick’s establishment. It was the gaze, Rowland felt, which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has always at her command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy. Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory. “Are you also an artist?” she inquired with an almost caressing inflection. It was clear that what she meant was something of this kind: “Be so good as to assure me without delay that you are really the young man of substance and amiability that you appear.” But Rowland answered simply the formal question--not the latent one. “Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson.”