The first time we saw her, I remember you called her a
product of the old world, and certainly you were not far wrong."
"Ah, she has an atmosphere," said Roderick, in the tone of high
appreciation.
"Young unmarried women," Rowland answered, "should be careful not to
have too much!"
"Ah, you don't forgive her," cried his companion, "for hitting you so
hard! A man ought to be flattered at such a girl as that taking so much
notice of him."
"A man is never flattered at a woman's not liking him."
"Are you sure she does n't like you? That 's to the credit of your
humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade
himself that he was in favor."
"He would have also," said Rowland, laughing, "to be a fellow of
remarkable ingenuity!" He asked himself privately how the deuce Roderick
reconciled it to his conscience to think so much more of the girl he
was not engaged to than of the girl he was. But it amounted almost to
arrogance, you may say, in poor Rowland to pretend to know how often
Roderick thought of Miss Garland. He wondered gloomily, at any rate,
whether for men of his companion's large, easy power, there was not
a larger moral law than for narrow mediocrities like himself, who,
yielding Nature a meagre interest on her investment (such as it was),
had no reason to expect from her this affectionate laxity as to their
accounts.
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