He joined her, and she presently sat down on a divan, rather wearily, and closed her Murray.

Then he asked her abruptly how Christina had pleased her.
She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she had been thinking of Christina.
"I don't like her!" she said with decision.
"What do you think of her ?" "I think she 's false." This was said without petulance or bitterness, but with a very positive air.
"But she wished to please you; she tried," Rowland rejoined, in a moment.
"I think not.

She wished to please herself!" Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more.

No allusion to Christina had passed between them since the day they met her at Saint Peter's, but he knew that she knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who loves, that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her.
To what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain; but last night's interview, apparently, had not reassured her.

It was, under these circumstances, equally unbecoming for Rowland either to depreciate or to defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having verified the girl's own assurance that she had made a bad impression.
He tried to talk of indifferent matters--about the statues and the frescoes; but to-day, plainly, aesthetic curiosity, with Miss Garland, had folded its wings.