Rowland passed the summer in England, staying with several old friends and two or three new ones.  On his arrival, he felt it on his conscience to write to Mrs. Hudson and inform her that her son had relieved him of his tutelage.  He felt that she considered him an incorruptible Mentor, following Roderick like a shadow, and he wished to let her know the truth.  But he made the truth very comfortable, and gave a succinct statement of the young man’s brilliant beginnings.  He owed it to himself, he said, to remind her that he had not judged lightly, and that Roderick’s present achievements were more profitable than his inglorious drudgery at Messrs. Striker & Spooner’s.  He was now taking a well-earned holiday and proposing to see a little of the world.  He would work none the worse for this; every artist needed to knock about and look at things for himself.  They had parted company for a couple of months, for Roderick was now a great man and beyond the need of going about with a keeper.  But they were to meet again in Rome in the autumn, and then he should be able to send her more good news.  Meanwhile, he was very happy in what Roderick had already done—­especially happy in the happiness it must have brought to her.  He ventured to ask to be kindly commended to Miss Garland.

His letter was promptly answered—­to his surprise in Miss Garland’s own hand.  The same mail brought also an epistle from Cecilia.  The latter was voluminous, and we must content ourselves with giving an extract.

“Your letter was filled with an echo of that brilliant Roman world, which made me almost ill with envy.  For a week after I got it I thought Northampton really unpardonably tame.  But I am drifting back again to my old deeps of resignation, and I rush to the window, when any one passes, with all my old gratitude for small favors.  So Roderick Hudson is already a great man, and you turn out to be a great prophet?  My compliments to both of you; I never heard of anything working so smoothly.  And he takes it all very quietly, and does n’t lose his balance nor let it turn his head?  You judged him, then, in a day better than I had done in six months, for I really did not expect that he would settle down into such a jog-trot of prosperity.  I believed he would do fine things, but I was sure he would intersperse them with a good many follies, and that his beautiful statues would spring up out of the midst of a straggling plantation of wild oats.  But from what you tell me, Mr. Striker may now go hang himself.....  There is one thing, however, to say as a friend, in the way of warning.  That candid soul can keep a secret, and he may have private designs on your equanimity which you don’t begin to suspect.  What do you think of his being engaged to Miss Garland?  The two ladies had given no hint of it all winter, but a fortnight ago, when those big photographs of his statues arrived, they first pinned them up on the wall, and then trotted out into the town, made