These were the only moments when his
sympathy halted, and they were brief. For the rest he let the days go by
unprotestingly, and enjoyed Roderick's serene efflorescence as he would
have done a beautiful summer sunrise. Rome, for the past month, had been
delicious. The annual descent of the Goths had not yet begun, and sunny
leisure seemed to brood over the city.
Roderick had taken out a note-book and was roughly sketching a memento
of the great Juno. Suddenly there was a noise on the gravel, and the
young men, looking up, saw three persons advancing. One was a woman
of middle age, with a rather grand air and a great many furbelows. She
looked very hard at our friends as she passed, and glanced back over her
shoulder, as if to hasten the step of a young girl who slowly followed
her. She had such an expansive majesty of mien that Rowland supposed she
must have some proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in
a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly
buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a
pair of soiled light gloves.
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