Very likely-though she had appeared to say it in joke-she was really
only thinking of his bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might
offer her two or three of the gems of his collection? If she would
only help him to marry Miss Osmond he would present her with his whole
museum. He could hardly say so to her outright; it would seem too
gross a bribe. But he should like her to believe it.
It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Osmond's, Mrs.
Osmond having an "evening"-she had taken the Thursday of each week
when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of
civility. The object of Mr. Rosier's well-regulated affection dwelt in
a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure
overlooking a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese
Palace. In a palace, too, little Pansy lived-a palace by Roman
measure, but a dungeon to poor Rosier's apprehensive mind. It seemed
to him of evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and
whose fastidious father he doubted of his ability to conciliate,
should be immured in a kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore
a stern old Roman name, which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and
craft and violence, which was mentioned in "Murray" and visited by
tourists who looked, on a vague survey, disappointed and depressed,
and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row
of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched loggia
overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out of a mossy
niche.
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