Roderick looked down at him surprised, and suddenly burst into a laugh.

Singleton paused a moment and then, with an intenser smile, went on: "Well, sir, your statues are beautiful, all the same!" Rowland's two other guests were ladies, and one of them, Miss Blanchard, belonged also to the artistic fraternity.

She was an American, she was young, she was pretty, and she had made her way to Rome alone and unaided.

She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed old serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly neighbor in the person of a certain Madame Grandoni, who in various social emergencies lent her a protecting wing, and had come with her to Rowland's dinner.
Miss Blanchard had a little money, but she was not above selling her pictures.

These represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses, with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it.