Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/473

 interest in their discussion, but he had no attention for his friend's ingenuity. Rowland had always at his friends' service and his own his vision of the how and the how much; he possessed conspicuously the sense of detail. He entered into Mrs. Hudson's position minutely and told her exactly why it seemed good that she should remove immediately to the Florentine villa. She received his advice, but sat on her guard for it, averting her eyes much and sighing like a person suspicious of a plausibility which might be, on her entertainer's part, but an escape from penalties. Yet she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received her permission to write to his friend that she would take the rooms.

Roderick assented to this decision with a large placidity. "Those Florentine villas are capable of anything! I 'm perfectly at your service."

"Then I 'm sure I hope you 'll recover your tone up there," his mother moaned while she gathered her shawl together. Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed to Rowland's marbles. "This is my tone just now. Once upon a time I did those things—if it 's possible to believe it."

Mrs. Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland dropped the remark that such a tone was a capital tone.

"They 're too hideously beautiful!" said Roderick.

Rowland solemnly shrugged his shoulders; it seemed to him he had nothing more to say. But as the others were going a last deep throb of the sense of undischarged duty led him to address to Roderick a 439