"And you have resisted--and conquered!"
"I believe I have conquered."
"The blessed Saint Francis be praised! It is well done.
If you like, we will offer a mass for you.""I am not a Catholic," said Rowland.
The frate smiled with dignity."That is a reason the more.""But it 's for you, then, to choose.Shake hands with me,"Rowland added; "that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out, to stop a moment in your chapel."They shook hands and separated.The frate crossed himself, opened his book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky.
Rowland passed back into the convent, and paused long enough in the chapel to look for the alms-box.He had had what is vulgarly termed a great scare; he believed, very poignantly for the time, in the Devil, and he felt an irresistible need to subscribe to any institution which engaged to keep him at a distance.
The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards he went in search of Roderick.He found him on the Pincian with his back turned to the crowd, looking at the sunset.
"I went to Florence," Rowland said, "and I thought of going farther;but I came back on purpose to give you another piece of advice.
Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?"
"Never!" said Roderick.
"The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of responsibility to--to those various sacred things you have forgotten, is in sending for your mother to join you here."Roderick stared."For my mother?"
"For your mother--and for Miss Garland."
Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.
"For Mary Garland--for my mother?" he repeated."Send for them?""Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to ask.
You are still engaged to Miss Garland?"
Roderick frowned darkly, but assented.
"It would give you pleasure, then, to see her?"Roderick turned away and for some moments answered nothing.
"Pleasure!" he said at last, huskily."Call it pain.""I regard you as a sick man," Rowland continued.
"In such a case Miss Garland would say that her place was at your side."Roderick looked at him some time askance, mistrustfully.
"Is this a deep-laid snare?" he asked slowly.
Rowland had come back with all his patience rekindled, but these words gave it an almost fatal chill."Heaven forgive you!" he cried bitterly.
"My idea has been simply this.Try, in decency, to understand it.
I have tried to befriend you, to help you, to inspire you with confidence, and I have failed.I took you from the hands of your mother and your betrothed, and it seemed to me my duty to restore you to their hands.
That 's all I have to say."
He was going, but Roderick forcibly detained him.
It would have been but a rough way of expressing it to say that one could never know how Roderick would take a thing.
It had happened more than once that when hit hard, deservedly, he had received the blow with touching gentleness.
On the other hand, he had often resented the softest taps.