time the tombstone was completed, a monument
of his inconsolability might have become an anachronism. But Mr.
Leavenworth was disposed to order something.

"You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent," he said. "I
am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make
a rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me
into mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded
by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.
I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you
think you could do something for my library? It is to be filled
with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this
style,"--pointing to one of Roderick's statues,--"standing out against
the morocco and gilt, would have a noble effect. The subject I have
already fixed upon. I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.
Do you think, now," asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, "you could
rise to the conception?"

"A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind," remarked Miss
Blanchard.

Roderick looked at her a moment, and then--"The simplest thing I
could do," he said, "would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss
Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for
the allegory."

Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there
was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of
Roderick's genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to
Miss Blanchard's beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental,
more impersonal. "If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of
Miss Blanchard," he added, "I should prefer to have it in no factitious
disguise!"

Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were
discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. "Who is
your friend?" he asked.

"A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune--which is
magnificent. One of nature's gentlemen!"

This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss
Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had
an opinion on the young girl's beauty, and, in her own fashion, she
expressed it epigrammatically. "She looks half like a Madonna and half
like a ballerina," she said.

Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young
sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best