CONFIDENCE
when there is a great deal of good in her. I was a great fool the other day," he went on. "I don't remember what I said. It was very weak."
"It seemed to me feeble," said Bernard. "But it is quite within a man's rights to be a fool once in a while, and you had never abused the license."
"Well, I have done it for a lifetime—for a lifetime." And Gordon took up his hat. He looked into the crown of it for a moment, and then he fixed his eyes on Bernard's again. "But there is one thing I hope you won't mind my saying. I have come back to my old impression of Miss Vivian."
"Your old impression?"
And Miss Vivian's accepted lover frowned a little.
"I mean that she's not simple. She's very strange."
Bernard's frown cleared away in a sudden, almost eager, smile.
"Say at once that you dislike her! That will do capitally."
Gordon shook his head, and he, too, almost smiled a little.
"It's not true. She's very wonderful. And if I did dislike her, I should struggle with it. It would never do for me to dislike your wife!"
After he had gone, when the night was half over, Bernard, lying awake a while, gave a laugh in the still darkness, as this last sentence came back to him.
On the morrow he saw Blanche, for he went to see Gordon. The latter, at first, was not at home; but he had a quarter of an hour's talk with his wife, whose powers of conversation were apparently not in the smallest degree affected by anything that had occurred.
"I hope you enjoyed your visit to London," she said. "Did you go to buy Angela a set of diamonds in Bond Street? You didn't buy anything—you didn't go into a shop? Then pray what did you go
267
