Rowland was not materially the wiser for this information, but Roderick was aroused by it to the exercise of some slight hospitality.  He altered the light, pulled forward two or three figures, and made an apology for not having more to show.  “I don’t pretend to have anything of an exhibition—­I am only a novice.”

“Indeed?—­a novice!  For a novice this is very well,” Mrs. Light declared.  “Cavaliere, we have seen nothing better than this.”

The Cavaliere smiled rapturously.  “It is stupendous!” he murmured.  “And we have been to all the studios.”

“Not to all—­heaven forbid!” cried Mrs. Light.  “But to a number that I have had pointed out by artistic friends.  I delight in studios:  they are the temples of the beautiful here below.  And if you are a novice, Mr. Hudson,” she went on, “you have already great admirers.  Half a dozen people have told us that yours were among the things to see.”  This gracious speech went unanswered; Roderick had already wandered across to the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light.  “Ah, he ’s gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that has had his head turned,” Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate.  “The artists are all crazy about her.  When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the pictures.  And when she goes into a ball-room what do the other women say?  Eh, Cavaliere?”

“She is very beautiful,” Rowland said, gravely.

Mrs. Light, who through her long, gold-cased glass was looking a little at everything, and at nothing as if she saw it, interrupted her random murmurs and exclamations, and surveyed Rowland from head to foot.  She looked at him all over; apparently he had not been mentioned to her as a feature of Roderick’s establishment.  It was the gaze, Rowland felt, which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has always at her command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy.  Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory.  “Are you also an artist?” she inquired with an almost caressing inflection.  It was clear that what she meant was something of this kind:  “Be so good as to assure me without delay that you are really the young man of substance and amiability that you appear.”

But Rowland answered simply the formal question—­not the latent one.  “Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr. Hudson.”

Mrs. Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking the Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that she could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble.  Rowland hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of Roderick’s renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several of his friend’s works and that she was welcome to come and see them at his rooms.  She bade the Cavaliere make a note of his address.  “Ah,