Maud had spoken nothing but the truth, when she said that the supposed Phil paid frequent visits to the blind sculptor’s house. Michael Meredith had grown very fond of the young man who could talk so well and so willingly of Italy and Italian art, who knew his beloved Rome as intimately as he himself, and who would listen to his raptures with perfect patience, and sympathize readily with his love for the beautiful. Tor liked Michael Meredith. He had a natural taste for oddities; and this handsome, blind enthusiast, with his princely airs and sublimely unconscious egotism, amused and interested him not a little. Society at Ladywell there was none. Even the rector and the doctor lived a mile or two away. Maud’s companionship was too dangerously sweet to be overmuch indulged; therefore Tor was glad enough of some house where he could come and go at will, always welcomed and never in the way. It was a charity to relieve the dull monotony of the blind man’s days, and Tor’s visits soon grew to be looked upon as regular events. ‘It is well,’ Michael Meredith would sometimes say to himself—‘it is well. Young men do not come day by day, to spend the best of their time with the old and the blind, without a motive other than compassion. What I have wished is coming to pass. I am not the attraction to Philip Debenham—I am not vain enough to suppose that for a moment. Roma is the attraction. It is her he comes to see. And though I cannot see their looks, their voices tell me that her coldness is melting before his quiet devotion, and it is plain he is her warm admirer. All is going well—very well. I shall call Philip Debenham “son” before I die.’ What Meredith said about Roma was certainly true. Her coldness towards her father’s guest had insensibly decreased. She could not continue to treat with an icy indifference, a man who had shown himself so considerate and forbearing towards the father she passionately loved. Roma was not blinded by her great love. She knew that her father was not a general favourite with the people who knew him. He was an egotist; he was wrapped up in a few ideas, to the exclusion of all else. He could not endure contradiction, and was never open to conviction. Blind prejudices hemmed him in on every side, and caused men generally to quarrel with him first, and to despise him afterwards. He seldom made a friend, hardly ever kept one, yet he never seemed conscious that there was aught amiss with himself. He only gently bewailed the crotchetiness of the world; and wondered how men ever got on there at all, when they were so determined not to hear reason.