suspected, awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of
the irony of things. And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his
opportunities, what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of
his uselessness. Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was
personally giving her little girl the education of a princess.

This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way
of activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe
and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the
early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination
of floral perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half
hostess, doing the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening,
was a phenomenon to which the young man's imagination was able to do
ample justice. Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was
almost joyous. She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was
a private reason for it--a reason quite distinct from her pleasure in
receiving her honored kinsman. The next day he flattered himself he was
on the way to discover it.

For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch, while
Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying
her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia
insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself.

"What is it you mean to do in Europe?" she asked, lightly, giving a
turn to the frill of her sleeve--just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to
bring out all the latent difficulties of the question.

"Why, very much what I do here," he answered. "No great harm."