To the Cavaliere, too, he felt that he was, in Roman phrase, sympathetic, but the idea of pleasing this extremely reduced gentleman was not disagreeable to him.
Miss Light's bust stood for a while on exhibition in Roderick's studio, and half the foreign colony came to see it.

With the completion of his work, however, Roderick's visits at the Palazzo F---- by no means came to an end.

He spent half his time in Mrs.Light's drawing-room, and began to be talked about as "attentive" to Christina.

The success of the bust restored his equanimity, and in the garrulity of his good-humor he suffered Rowland to see that she was just now the object uppermost in his thoughts.

Rowland, when they talked of her, was rather listener than speaker; partly because Roderick's own tone was so resonant and exultant, and partly because, when his companion laughed at him for having called her unsafe, he was too perplexed to defend himself.
The impression remained that she was unsafe; that she was a complex, willful, passionate creature, who might easily engulf a too confiding spirit in the eddies of her capricious temper.