Roderick, and not in the least for Mary Garland. She
was fond of the young girl, but she had valued her primarily, during the
last two years, as a kind of assistant priestess at Roderick's shrine.
Roderick had honored her by asking her to become his wife, but that poor
Mary had any rights in consequence Mrs. Hudson was quite incapable
of perceiving. Her sentiment on the subject was of course not very
vigorously formulated, but she was unprepared to admit that Miss Garland
had any ground for complaint. Roderick was very unhappy; that was
enough, and Mary's duty was to join her patience and her prayers to
those of his doting mother. Roderick might fall in love with whom he
pleased; no doubt that women trained in the mysterious Roman arts were
only too proud and too happy to make it easy for him; and it was very
presuming in poor, plain Mary to feel any personal resentment. Mrs.
Hudson's philosophy was of too narrow a scope to suggest that a mother
may forgive where a mistress cannot, and she thought herself greatly
aggrieved that Miss Garland was not so disinterested as herself. She was
ready to drop dead in Roderick's service, and she was quite capable
of seeing her companion falter and grow faint, without a tremor of
compassion. Mary, apparently, had given some intimation of her belief
that if constancy is the flower of devotion, reciprocity is the
guarantee of constancy, and Mrs. Hudson had rebuked her failing faith
and called it cruelty. That Miss Garland had found it hard to reason
with Mrs. Hudson, that she suffered deeply from the elder lady's
softly bitter imputations, and that, in short, he had companionship
in misfortune--all this made Rowland find a certain luxury in his
discomfort.

The party at Villa Pandolfini used to sit in the garden in the evenings,
which Rowland almost always spent with them. Their entertainment was in
the heavily perfumed air, in the dim, far starlight, in the crenelated
tower of a neighboring villa, which loomed vaguely above them in the
warm darkness, and in such conversation as depressing reflections
allowed. Roderick, clad always in white, roamed about like a restless
ghost, silent for the most part, but making from time to time a brief
observation, characterized by the most fantastic cynicism. Roderick's
contributions to the conversation were indeed always so fantastic that,
though half the time they wearied him unspeakably, Rowland made an
effort to treat them humorously. With Row