Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/99

 and, startled by the audacity of her comparison, she appealed to Miss Garland—"the goose, or the hen, who hatched a swan's egg. I 've never been able to give him what he requires. I 've always thought that in more brilliant circumstances he might find his place and be happy. But at the same time I was afraid of the world for him; it was so dangerous and dreadful—so terribly mixed. No doubt I know very little about it. I never suspected, I confess, that it contained persons of such liberality as yours."

Rowland replied that evidently she had done the world but scanty justice.

"No, she always does justice," Miss Garland objected after a pause. "It 's this that 's so much like a fairy-tale."

"It 's what, pray?"

"Why, your coming here all unannounced, unknown, so rich and so polite, and carrying off my cousin in a golden cloud."

If this was banter Miss Garland had the best of it, for Rowland fairly fell a-musing over the question of its perhaps being an acid meant to bite. Before he withdrew Mrs. Hudson made him tell her again that Roderick's powers were probably remarkable. He had inspired her with a clinging, caressing faith in his wisdom. "He will really do beautiful things?" she asked—"the very most beautiful?"

"I see no intrinsic reason why he should n't."

"Well, we shall think of that as we sit here alone," she rejoined. "Mary and I will sit here and talk about it. So I give him up," she went on as he was 65