Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/260

 the street. As he was arranging his necktie before the glass something occurred to him that made him thoughtful. He stopped a few moments later, as they were going out, with his hand on the door-knob. "You did from your own point of view an indiscreet thing, you know, to tell Miss Light of my engagement."

Rowland faced him in a manner which was partly a protest, but also partly a recognition.

"If she's the particular sort of vampire you seem to take her for," Roderick added, "you've only given her an incentive."

"And that's the girl you propose to devote yourself to?" his companion cried.

"Oh, I don't say it, mind! I only say—well, I say that the next time you mean to render me a service it will be safest for you to give me notice beforehand!"

It was perfectly characteristic of Roderick that a fortnight later he should have let his friend know that he depended upon him for society at Frascati as freely as if no irritating topic had ever been discussed between them. Rowland thought him generous, and he had at any rate a liberal faculty of forgetting that he had given you any reason to be displeased with him. It was equally characteristic of Rowland that he complied with his friend's summons without a moment's hesitation. His cousin Cecilia had once told him that he was too credulous to have a right to be kind. She put the case with too little favour, or too much, as the reader chooses; it is certain at least that he gave others, as a general thing, the benefit of any doubt, 226