“But if I am to be your doctor,” said Rowland, “you must tell me how your illness began.”

“I can tell you very little.  It began with Mrs. Hudson being unjust to me, for the first time in her life.  And now I am already better!”

I mention this incident because it confirmed an impression of Rowland’s from which he had derived a certain consolation.  He knew that Mrs. Hudson considered her son’s ill-regulated passion for Christina Light a very regrettable affair, but he suspected that her manifest compassion had been all for 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.