Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/485

 liked him well enough to forgive him an injury. It was partly, he fancied, that there were occasional lapses, deep and sweet, in her sense of what had happened. When on arriving at Florence she saw the place he had brought them to in their trouble, she had given him a look, and said a few words, that had seemed almost more than a remission of penalties. This happened in the court of the villa—the large grey quadrangle, overstretched, from edge to edge of the red-tiled roof, by the deep Italian sky. Mary had felt on the spot the sovereign charm of the place; it was reflected in her sincere eyes, and, immediately promising himself to work it, as the phrase was, for all it was worth, Rowland as promptly accepted the odium of not having done the villa justice. She fell in love on the spot with Florence, and used to look down wistfully at the towered city from their terraced garden. Roderick having now no pretext for not being her cicerone, Rowland was no longer at liberty, as he had been in Rome, to propose frequent excursions to her. Roderick's own invitations, however, were much interspaced, and their companion more than once ventured to introduce her to a gallery or a church. These expeditions were not so blissful, to Rowland's sense, as the rambles they had taken together in Rome, for the excellent reason that they made unmistakeably, a more embarrassed appeal to hers. She was trying what they could do for her—little indeed as she might betray it if they failed. She had at her command but half her attention, and often, when she had begun with looking closely at a 451