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 not illogically rewarded by the bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm as had crumbled away from her estimate of his companion.  If some day she had declared, in a sudden burst of passion, that she was outwearied and sickened, and that she gave up her recreant lover, Rowland’s expectation would have gone half-way to meet her.  And certainly if her passion had taken this course no generous critic would utterly condemn her.  She had been neglected, ignored, forsaken, treated with a contempt which no girl of a fine temper could endure.  There were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that of Burd Helen in the ballad, lay in clinging to the man of their love through thick and thin, and in bowing their head to all hard usage.  This attitude had often an exquisite beauty of its own, but Rowland deemed that he had solid reason to believe it never could be Mary Garland’s.  She was not a passive creature; she was not soft and meek and grateful for chance bounties.  With all her reserve of manner she was proud and eager; she asked much and she wanted what she asked; she believed in fine things and she never could long persuade herself that fine things missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved.  Once Rowland passed an angry day.  He had dreamed—­it was the most insubstantial of dreams—­that she had given him the right to believe that she looked to him to transmute her discontent.  And yet here she was throwing herself back into Roderick’s arms at his lightest overture, and playing with his own half fearful, half shameful hopes!  Rowland declared to himself that his position was essentially detestable, and that all the philosophy he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable nor comfortable.  He would go away and make an end of it.  He did not go away; he simply took a long walk, stayed away from the inn all day, and on his return found Miss Garland sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.