Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/81

 in the second place 'Nonsense! the boy's doing very well. Let well alone!'

"That in the first five minutes. What would you have said later?"

"That for a man who's generally averse to meddling, you were suddenly rather officious." Rowland's countenance fell; he frowned in silence. Cecilia looked at him askance; gradually the spark of irritation faded from her eye. "Pardon my sharpness," she resumed at last. "But I'm literally in despair at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the past year, have kept me alive. They 've given a point to a very dull time—a shining little silver-tip to days that seemed made of a baser metal. I don't say he's a phœnix or that he's always an angel, never a bore—but I liked to see him. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work and women must weep!"

"Decidedly not!" said Rowland with a good deal of emphasis. He had suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia, for all her quiet life, was in the enjoyment of some private and peculiar satisfaction, and he discovered that she found it in Hudson's lounging visits and communicative youth. Now he wondered whether, responsibly viewed, her gain in the matter were not her young friend's loss. It was evident that Cecilia was haunted here with no morbid vision of duty, and that her judgement, habitually clear under the demands of domestic economy, had made easy terms, her dull life prompting, with the joy of eye and ear. She liked her young friend 47