Was the engagement broken? Rowland
wondered, yet without asking. But it hardly mattered, for if, as was
more than probable, Miss Garland had peremptorily released her cousin,
her own heart had by no means recovered its liberty. It was very certain
to Rowland's mind that if she had given him up she had by no means
ceased to care for him passionately, and that, to exhaust her charity
for his weaknesses, Roderick would have, as the phrase is, a long row to
hoe. She spoke of Roderick as she might have done of a person suffering
from a serious malady which demanded much tenderness; but if Rowland
had found it possible to accuse her of dishonesty he would have said now
that she believed appreciably less than she pretended to in her victim's
being an involuntary patient. There are women whose love is care-taking
and patronizing, and who rather prefer a weak man because he gives them
a comfortable sense of strength. It did not in the least please Rowland
to believe that Mary Garland was one of these; for he held that such
women were only males in petticoats, and he was convinced that Miss
Garland's heart was constructed after the most perfect feminine model.
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