without his knowing it, by an undue apprehension that things after all might not go so ideally well with Roderick.  When he understood his anxiety it vexed him, and he rebuked himself for taking things unmanfully hard.  If Roderick chose to follow a crooked path, it was no fault of his; he had given him, he would continue to give him, all that he had offered him—­friendship, sympathy, advice.  He had not undertaken to provide him with unflagging strength of purpose, nor to stand bondsman for unqualified success.

If Rowland felt his roots striking and spreading in the Roman soil, Roderick also surrendered himself with renewed abandon to the local influence.  More than once he declared to his companion that he meant to live and die within the shadow of Saint Peter’s, and that he cared little if he never again drew breath in American air.  “For a man of my temperament, Rome is the only possible place,” he said; “it ’s better to recognize the fact early than late.  So I shall never go home unless I am absolutely forced.”

“What is your idea of ’force’?” asked Rowland, smiling.  “It seems to me you have an excellent reason for going home some day or other.”

“Ah, you mean my engagement?” Roderick answered with unaverted eyes.  “Yes, I am distinctly engaged, in Northampton, and impatiently waited for!” And he gave a little sympathetic sigh.  “To reconcile Northampton and Rome is rather a problem.  Mary had better come out here.  Even at the worst I have no intention of giving up Rome within six or eight years, and an engagement of that duration would be rather absurd.”

“Miss Garland could hardly leave your mother,” Rowland observed.

“Oh, of course my mother should come.  I think I will suggest it in my next letter.  It will take her a year or two to make up her mind to it, but if she consents it will brighten her up.  It ’s too small a life, over there, even for a timid old lady.  It is hard to imagine,” he added, “any change in Mary being a change for the better; but I should like her to take a look at the world and have her notions stretched a little.  One is never so good, I suppose, but that one can improve a little.”

“If you wish your mother and Miss Garland to come,” Rowland suggested, “you had better go home and bring them.”

“Oh, I can’t think of leaving Europe, for many a day,” Roderick answered.  “At present it would quite break the charm.  I am just beginning to profit, to get used to things and take them naturally.  I am sure the sight of Northampton Main Street would permanently upset me.”

It was reassuring to hear that Roderick, in his own view, was but “just beginning” to spread his wings, and Rowland, if he had had any forebodings, might have suffered them to be modified by this declaration.  This was the first time since their meeting at Geneva that Roderick had mentioned Miss Garland’s name, but the ice being broken, he indulged for some time afterward in frequent allusions to his betrothed,