IV
It had been a very sage remark of Cecilia's that Roderick would change with a change in his circumstances. Rowland had telegraphed to New York for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came that youth's spirits rose to incalculable heights. He was radiant with good-humour, and his charming gaiety the evident pledge of a brilliant future. He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old grievances—he seemed in every way reconciled to a world in which he was going to be important and wonderful. He was profusely jocose and suggestive, and, as Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that he might have been not so much beginning a Roman career as ending an earthly one. He took long walks with Rowland, who felt more and more the fascination of his surrender—a fascinated one too, in its degree—to all this complacency. Rowland returned several times to Mrs. Hudson's and found the two ladies doing their best to keep in tune with their companion's glee. Mary Garland, he thought, was succeeding better than her demeanour on his first visit had promised. He tried to have some undiverted talk with her, but her extreme reserve forced him to content himself with such response to his rather urgent overtures as might be extracted from her leaving him, very frankly, all the consciousness of
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