Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/165

 brought also an epistle from Cecilia. The document 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 quite too abysmally flat. 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 favours. 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 saw a trick so prettily played! 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 never expected he would behave so properly. 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 dense plantation of wild oats. But from what you tell me Mr. Striker may now go hang himself There is one thing, however, to tell you as a friend and in the way of warning. That candid soul can keep a secret, and he may have private designs on your peace of mind. What do you think of his being engaged to marry Mary 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 and made a dozen calls, announcing the great 131