“I think I have guessed it,” Rowland said, after a pregnant silence.  The Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added, “Though there are some signs, indeed, I don’t understand.”

“Puzzle them out at your leisure,” said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand.  “I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post.  I wish you were a Catholic; I would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us the next half-hour.”

“For ‘us’?  For whom?”

“For all of us.  At any rate remember this:  I worship the Christina!”

Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light’s dress; he turned away, and the Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post.  Rowland for the next couple of days pondered his riddle.

CHAPTER XI.  Mrs. Hudson

Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went to Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally good health and spirits.  After this he called again on the two ladies from Northampton, but, as Roderick’s absence continued, he was able neither to furnish nor to obtain much comfort.  Miss Garland’s apprehensive face seemed to him an image of his own state of mind.  He was profoundly depressed; he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished it would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages.  On the afternoon of the third day he went into Saint Peter’s, his frequent resort whenever the outer world was disagreeable.  From a heart-ache to a Roman rain there were few importunate pains the great church did not help him to forget.  He had wandered there for half an hour, when he came upon a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers.  He saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery of the basilica; and in a moment he perceived that the artist was little Sam Singleton.

Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity.  Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days, was as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk.  There was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips to some simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense of extreme moral refreshment.  On this occasion he mentally blessed the ingenuous little artist, and heard presently with keen regret that he was to leave Rome on the morrow.  Singleton had come to bid farewell to Saint Peter’s, and he was gathering a few supreme memories.  He had earned a purse-full of money, and he was meaning to take a summer’s holiday; going to Switzerland, to Germany, to Paris.  In the autumn he was to return home; his family—­composed, as Rowland knew, of a father who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried sisters, one of whom gave lyceum-lectures on woman’s rights, the whole