Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/228

 Miss Blanchard artfully interposed. "I wish I could induce Mr. Hudson to think he might perhaps do something with mine!"

It immediately relieved the tension and made Mr. Hudson consider her with great gravity. "If your idea resembles your personal type, Miss Blanchard, I quite see my figure. I close with you on Intellectual Refinement, Mr. Leavenworth, if this lady will sit for us."

Miss Blanchard demurred; the tribute might be ironic; and there was ever afterwards a reflexion of her uncertainty in her opinion of Roderick's genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that, with all deference to Miss Blanchard's beauty, he desired something less breathingly actual,—more monumentally impersonal. "If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard," he added, "I shouldn't wish it in the form of a cold symbol."

He spoke as if the young woman's charms might compromise the chastity of his conception, but Roderick, after an instant, imperturbable, had drawn him into deep waters. Rowland, nervously conscious of this, appealed meanwhile to the judicious Augusta.

"Who 's your pompous friend?"

"A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune—which is magnificent. One of nature's gentlemen!"

This was nobly sufficient, but Rowland turned in vague unrest to the bust of Miss Light. Like every one else in Rome by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on that young woman's beauty, and, after her own fashion, she expressed it in a quoteable phrase. 194