It was the gaze, Rowland felt, which the vigilant and ambitious mamma of a beautiful daughter has always at her command for well-dressed young men of candid physiognomy.
Her inspection in this case seemed satisfactory.

"Are you also an artist ?" she inquired with an almost caressing inflection.

It was clear that what she meant was something of this kind: "Be so good as to assure me without delay that you are really the young man of substance and amiability that you appear." But Rowland answered simply the formal question--not the latent one.
"Dear me, no; I am only a friend of Mr.Hudson." Mrs.Light, with a sigh, returned to the statues, and after mistaking the Adam for a gladiator, and the Eve for a Pocahontas, declared that she could not judge of such things unless she saw them in the marble.
Rowland hesitated a moment, and then speaking in the interest of Roderick's renown, said that he was the happy possessor of several of his friend's works and that she was welcome to come and see them at his rooms.

She bade the Cavaliere make a note of his address.

"Ah, you 're a patron of the arts," she said.