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.

Yet her help was rendered in the same unconscious, unacknowledged fashion as before; there was no explicit change in their relations.

After that distressing scene in Rome which had immediately preceded their departure, it was of course impossible that there should not be on Miss Garland's part some frankness of allusion to Roderick's sad condition.