When his companion had left him he went in search of Cecilia.  She was sitting at work at a shady window, and welcomed him to a low chintz-covered chair.  He sat some time, thoughtfully snipping tape with her scissors; he expected criticism and he was preparing a rejoinder.  At last he told her of Roderick’s decision and of his own influence in it.  Cecilia, besides an extreme surprise, exhibited a certain fine displeasure at his not having asked her advice.

“What would you have said, if I had?” he demanded.

“I would have said in the first place, ’Oh for pity’s sake don’t carry off the person in all Northampton who amuses me most!’ I would have said in the second place, ’Nonsense! the boy is doing very well.  Let well alone!’”

“That in the first five minutes.  What would you have said later?”

“That for a man who is generally averse to meddling, you were suddenly rather officious.”

Rowland’s countenance fell.  He frowned in silence.  Cecilia looked at him askance; gradually the spark of irritation faded from her eye.

“Excuse my sharpness,” she resumed at last.  “But I am literally in despair at losing Roderick Hudson.  His visits in the evening, for the past year, have kept me alive.  They have given a silver tip to leaden days.  I don’t say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he is of a different one.  Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune.  Men must work and women must weep!”

“Decidedly not!” said Rowland, with a good deal of emphasis.  He had suspected from the first hour of his stay that Cecilia had treated herself to a private social luxury; he had then discovered that she found it in Hudson’s lounging visits and boyish chatter, and he had felt himself wondering at last whether, judiciously viewed, her gain in the matter was not the young man’s loss.  It was evident that Cecilia was not judicious, and that her good sense, habitually rigid under the demands of domestic economy, indulged itself with a certain agreeable laxity on this particular point.  She liked her young friend just as he was; she humored him, flattered him, laughed at him, caressed him—­did everything but advise him.  It was a flirtation without the benefits of a flirtation.  She was too old to let him fall in love with her, which might have done him good; and her inclination was to keep him young, so that the nonsense he talked might never transgress a certain line.  It was quite conceivable that poor Cecilia should relish a pastime; but if one had philanthropically embraced the idea that something considerable might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her friendship was not what might be called tonic.  So Rowland reflected, in the glow of his new-born sympathy.  There was a later time when he would have been grateful if Hudson’s susceptibility to the relaxing influence of lovely women might have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as he rendered the excellent Cecilia.