One morning, going into Roderick's studio, Rowland found the young sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard — but entertaining her, as it were, quite at her own expense. She ministered, for him, to irritation, and he had never climbed to her sky-parlour with the exclamatory herd at large — exclamatory over her petals and dewdrops. He had once quoted Tennyson against her —
"And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?"
"In all Miss Blanchard's roses you may be sure there is a moral," he had said. "You can see it sticking out its head, and if you go to smell the flower it scratches your nose." But on this occasion she had come with a propitiatory gift — introducing her friend and countryman Mr. Leavenworth. Mr. Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully-brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favoured face, which seemed somehow to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth white forehead) it bore a certain resemblance to a large parlour with a very florid carpet, but without mural decoration. He held his head high, talked impressively, and told Roderick within five minutes that he was a widower travelling to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the proprietorship of large mines of
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