enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in
long rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy
places, where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself
on the never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging
away the hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with
him; though Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his
society. Rowland now made it a rule to treat him like a perfectly sane
man, to assume that all things were well with him, and never to allude
to the prosperity he had forfeited or to the work he was not doing. He
would have still said, had you questioned him, that Roderick's condition
was a mood--certainly a puzzling one. It might last yet for many a weary
hour; but it was a long lane that had no turning. Roderick's blues would
not last forever. Rowland's interest in Miss Garland's relations with
her cousin was still profoundly attentive, and perplexed as he was on
all sides, he found nothing transparent here. After their arrival at
Engelthal, Roderick appeared to seek the young girl's society more than
he had done hitherto, and this revival of ardor could not fail to set
his friend a-wondering. They sat together and strolled together, and
Miss Garland often read aloud to him. One day, on their coming to
dinner, after he had been lying half the morning at her feet, in the
shadow of a rock, Rowland asked him what she had been reading.

"I don't know," Roderick said, "I don't heed the sense." Miss Garland
heard this, and Rowland looked at her. She looked at Roderick sharply
and with a little blush. "I listen to Mary," Roderick continued,
"for the sake of her voice. It 's distractingly sweet!" At this Miss
Garland's blush deepened, and she looked away.

Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination to
wander in the direction of certain conjectures which the reader may deem
unflattering to Miss Garland's constancy. He had asked himself whether
her faith in Roderick had not faltered, and that demand of hers which
had brought about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost
equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe. Rowland
was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk the supposition that
Miss Garland had contrasted him with Roderick to his own advantage; but
he had a certain consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed
itself to fancy, at moments, that it might be no