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to him when they parted-the young lady to go down into
Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was
under bonds to join other friends that he should be roman-
tically wretched if he were not to see her again. The simplest
way to do so was to go in the autumn to Rome, where Miss
Osmond was domiciled with her family. Mr. Rosier started
on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the
first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the
young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise.
He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the
Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in
wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adven-
turer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end
of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made
to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in
vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond’s composition. She
was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was
really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous
meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dres-
den-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom
of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier,
whose taste was predominantly for that manner, could not
fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of com-
paratively frivolous periods would have been apparent from
the attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle’s drawing-
room, which, although furnished with specimens of every
style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centu-
ries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked
round; and then ‘By Jove, she has some jolly good things!’ he

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