she ’s very sweet-looking.  I wonder why she does n’t have something done to her teeth.”  Rowland also received a summons to Madame Grandoni’s tea-drinking, and went betimes, as he had been requested.  He was eagerly desirous to lend his mute applause to Mary Garland’s debut in the Roman social world.  The two ladies had arrived, with Roderick, silent and careless, in attendance.  Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by Mr. Leavenworth, and the party was completed by a dozen artists of both sexes and various nationalities.  It was a friendly and easy assembly, like all Madame Grandoni’s parties, and in the course of the evening there was some excellent music.  People played and sang for Madame Grandoni, on easy terms, who, elsewhere, were not to be heard for the asking.  She was herself a superior musician, and singers found it a privilege to perform to her accompaniment.  Rowland talked to various persons, but for the first time in his life his attention visibly wandered; he could not keep his eyes off Mary Garland.  Madame Grandoni had said that he sometimes spoke of her as pretty and sometimes as plain; to-night, if he had had occasion to describe her appearance, he would have called her beautiful.  She was dressed more than he had ever seen her; it was becoming, and gave her a deeper color and an ampler presence.  Two or three persons were introduced to her who were apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them with her brilliant natural smile.  Rowland, from an opposite corner, reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard’s classic contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed him hardly more than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value.  Roderick could not be accused of rancor, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied familiarity, and, lounging against the wall, with hands in pockets, was discoursing to him with candid serenity.  Now that he had done him an impertinence, he evidently found him less intolerable.  Mr. Leavenworth stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth, without looking at the young sculptor, like a large, drowsy dog snapping at flies.  Rowland had found it disagreeable to be told Miss Blanchard would have married him for the asking, and he would have felt some embarrassment in going to speak to her if his modesty had not found incredulity so easy.  The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had never been present to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all ways, to be compassed with a great effort.  He had half an hour’s talk with her; a farewell talk, as it seemed to him—­a farewell not to a real illusion, but to the idea that for him, in that matter, there could ever be an acceptable pis-aller.  He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness.  But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs. Browning and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her responding on this occasion