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‘s what I mean by her ability.”
“She calls herself cruel,” said Gordon, “but she has not had the cruelty to try. She has been very reasonable—she has been perfect. I agreed with her that I would drop the subject for a while, and that meanwhile we should be good friends. We should take time to know each other better and act in accordance with further knowledge. There was no hurry, since we trusted each other—wrong as my trust might be. She had no wish that I should go away. I was not in the least disagreeable to her; she liked me extremely, and I was perfectly free to try and please her. Only I should drop my proposal, and be free to take it up again or leave it alone, later, as I should choose. If she felt differently then, I should have the benefit of it, and if I myself felt differently, I should also have the benefit of it.”
“That ‘s a very comfortable arrangement. And that ‘s your present situation?” asked Bernard.
Gordon hesitated a moment.
“More or less, but not exactly.”
“Miss Vivian feels differently?” said Bernard.
“Not that I know of.”
Gordon’s companion, with a laugh, clapped him on the shoulder again.
“Admirable youth, you are a capital match!”
“Are you alluding to my money?”
“To your money and to your modesty. There is as much of one as of the other—which is saying a great deal.”
“Well,” said Gordon, “in spite of that enviable combination, I am not happy.”
“I thought you seemed pensive!” Bernard exclaimed. “It ‘s you, then, who feel differently.”
Gordon gave a sigh.
“To say that is to say too much.”
“What shall we say, then?” his companion asked, kindly.
Gordon stopped again; he stood there looking up at a certain particularly lustrous star which twinkled—the night was cloudy—in an open patch of sky, and the vague brightness shone down on his honest and serious visage.
“I don’t understand her,” he said.
“Oh, I ‘ll say that with you any day!” cried Bernard. “I can’t help you there.”
“You must help me;” and Gordon Wright deserted his star. “You must keep me in good humor.”
“Please to walk on, then. I don’t in the least pity you; she is very charming with you.”
“True enough; but insisting on that is not the way to keep me in good humor—when I feel as I do.”
“How is it you feel?”
“Puzzled to death—bewildered—depressed!”
This was but the beginning of Gordon Wright’s list; he went on to say that though he “thought as highly” of Miss Vivian as he had ever done, he felt less at his ease with her than in the first weeks of their acquaintance, and this condition made him uncomfortable and unhappy.
“I don’t know what ‘s the matter,” said poor Gordon. “I don’t know what has come between us. It is n’t her fault—I don’t make her responsible for it. I began to notice it about a fortnight ago—before you came; shortly after that talk I had with her that I have just described to you. Her manner has n’t changed and I have no reason to suppose that she likes me any the less; but she makes a strange impression on me—she makes me uneasy. It ‘s only her nature coming out, I suppose—what you might call her originality. She ‘s thoroughly original—she ‘s a kind of mysterious creature. I suppose that what I feel is a sort of fascination; but that is just what I don’t like. Hang it, I don’t want to be fascinated—I object to being fascinated!”
This little story had taken some time in the telling, so that the two young men had now reached their hotel.
“Ah, my dear Gordon,” said Bernard, “we speak a different language. If you don’t want to be fascinated, what is one to say to you? ‘Object to being fascinated!’ There ‘s a man easy to satisfy! Raffine, va!”
“Well, see here now,” said Gordon, stopping in the door-way of the inn; “when it comes to the point, do you like it yourself?”
“When it comes to the point?” Bernard exclaimed. “I assure you I don’t wait till then. I like the beginning—I delight in the approach of it—I revel in the prospect.”
“That’s just what I did. But now that the thing has come—I don’t revel. To be fascinated is to be mystified. Damn it, I like my liberty—I like my judgment!”
“So do I—like yours,” said Bernard, laughing, as they took their bedroom candles.
CHAPTER IX
Bernard talked of this matter rather theoretically, inasmuch as to his own sense, he was in a state neither of incipient nor of absorbed fascination. He got on very easily, however, with Angela Vivian, and felt none of the mysterious discomfort alluded to by his friend. The element of mystery attached itself rather to the young lady’s mother, who gave him the impression that for undiscoverable reasons she avoided his society. He regretted her evasive deportment, for he found something agreeable in this shy and scrupulous little woman, who struck him as a curious specimen of a society of which he had once been very fond. He learned that she was of old New England stock, but he had not needed this information to perceive that Mrs. Vivian was animated by the genius of Boston. “She has the Boston temperament,” he said, using a phrase with which he had become familiar and which evoked a train of associations. But then he immediately added that if Mrs. Vivian was a daughter of the Puritans, the Puritan strain in her disposition had been mingled with another element. “It is the Boston temperament sophisticated,” he said; “perverted a little—perhaps even corrupted. It is the local east-wind with an infusion from climates less tonic.” It seemed to him that Mrs. Vivian was a Puritan grown worldly—a Bostonian relaxed; and this impression, oddly enough, contributed to his wish to know more of her. He felt like going up to her very politely and saying, “Dear lady and most honored compatriot, what in the world have I done to displease you? You don’t approve of me, and I am dying to know the reason why. I should be so happy to exert myself to be agreeable to you. It ‘s no use; you give me the cold shoulder. When I speak to you, you look the other way; it is only when I speak to your daughter that you look at me. It is true that at those times you look at me very hard, and if I am not greatly mistaken, you are not gratified by what you see. You count the words I address to your beautiful Angela—you time our harmless little interviews. You interrupt them indeed whenever you can; you call her away—you appeal to her; you cut across the conversation. You are always laying plots to keep us apart. Why can’t you leave me alone? I assure you I am the most innocent of men. Your beautiful Angela can’t possibly be injured by my conversation, and I have no designs whatever upon her peace of mind. What on earth have I done to offend you?”
These observations Bernard Longueville was disposed to make, and one afternoon, the opportunity offering, they rose to his lips and came very near passing them. In fact, however, at the last moment, his eloquence took another turn. It was the custom of the orchestra at the Kursaal to play in the afternoon, and as the music was often good, a great many people assembled under the trees, at three o’clock, to listen to it. This was not, as a regular thing, an hour of re-union for the little group in which we are especially interested; Miss Vivian, in particular, unless an excursion of some sort had been agreed upon the day before, was usually not to be seen in the precincts of the Conversation-house until the evening. Bernard, one afternoon, at three o’clock, directed his steps to this small world-centre of Baden, and, passing along the terrace, soon encountered little Blanche Evers strolling there under a pink parasol and accompanied by Captain Lovelock. This young lady was always extremely sociable; it was quite in accordance with her habitual geniality that she should stop and say how d’ ye do to our hero.
“Mr. Longueville is growing very frivolous,” she said, “coming to the Kursaal at all sorts of hours.”
“There is nothing frivolous