He felt
like a reckless trustee who has speculated with the widow's mite, and is
haunted with the reflection of ruin that he sees in her tearful eyes. He
did everything conceivable to be polite to Mrs. Hudson, and to treat her
with distinguished deference. Perhaps his exasperated nerves made him
overshoot the mark, and rendered his civilities a trifle peremptory. She
seemed capable of believing that he was trying to make a fool of her;
she would have thought him cruelly recreant if he had suddenly
departed in desperation, and yet she gave him no visible credit for his
constancy. Women are said by some authorities to be cruel; I don't know
how true this is, but it may at least be pertinent to remark that Mrs.
Hudson was very much of a woman. It often seemed to Rowland that he
had too decidedly forfeited his freedom, and that there was something
positively grotesque in a man of his age and circumstances living in
such a moral bondage.
But Mary Garland had helped him before, and she helped him now--helped
him not less than he had assured himself she would when he found himself
drifting to Florence.
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