Confidence

Bernard did his best to encourage this gracious sentiment, and it seemed to him that there was something yet to be done to implant it more firmly in Angela’s breast.

“I have a confession to make to you,” he said to her one day. “I wish you would listen to it.”

“Is it something very horrible?” Angela asked.

“Something very horrible indeed. I once did you an injury.”

“An injury?” she repeated, in a tone which seemed to reduce the offence to contemptible proportions by simple vagueness of mind about it.

“I don’t know what to call it,” said Bernard. “A poor service—an ill-turn.”

Angela gave a shrug, or rather an imitation of a shrug; for she was not a shrugging person.

“I never knew it.”

“I misrepresented you to Gordon Wright,” Bernard went on.

“Why do you speak to me of him?” she asked rather sadly.

“Does it displease you?”

She hesitated a little.

“Yes, it displeases me. If your confession has anything to do with him, I would rather not hear it.”

Bernard returned to the subject another time—he had plenty of opportunities. He spent a portion of every day in the company of these dear women; and these days were the happiest of his life. The autumn weather was warm and soothing, the quartier was still deserted, and the uproar of the great city, which seemed a hundred miles away, reached them through the dense October air with a softened and muffled sound. The evenings, however, were growing cool, and before long they lighted the first fire of the season in Mrs. Vivian’s heavily draped little chimney-piece. On this occasion Bernard sat there with Angela, watching the bright crackle of the wood and feeling that the charm of winter nights had begun. These two young persons were alone together in the gathering dusk; it was the hour before dinner, before the lamp had been lighted.

“I insist upon making you my confession,” said Bernard. “I shall be very unhappy until you let me do it.”

“Unhappy? You are the happiest of men.”

“I lie upon roses, if you will; but this memory, this remorse, is a folded rose-leaf. I was completely mistaken about you at Baden; I thought all manner of evil of you—or at least I said it.”

“Men are dull creatures,” said Angela.

“I think they are. So much so that, as I look back upon that time, there are some things I don’t understand even now.”

“I don’t see why you should look back. People in our position are supposed to look forward.”

“You don’t like those Baden days yourself,” said Bernard. “You don’t like to think of them.”

“What a wonderful discovery!”

Bernard looked at her a moment in the brightening fire-light.

“What part was it you tried to play there?”

Angela shook her head.

“Men are dull creatures.”

“I have already granted that, and I am eating humble pie in asking for an explanation.”

“What did you say of me?” Angela asked, after a silence.

“I said you were a coquette. Remember that I am simply historical.”

She got up and stood in front of the fire, having her hand on the chimney-piece and looking down at the blaze. For some moments she remained there. Bernard could not see her face.

“I said you were a dangerous woman to marry,” he went on deliberately. “I said it because I thought it. I gave Gordon an opinion about you—it was a very unfavorable one. I could n’t make you out—I thought you were playing a double part. I believed that you were ready to marry him, and yet I saw—I thought I saw—” and Bernard paused again.

“What did you see?” and Angela turned toward him.

“That you were encouraging me—playing with me.”

“And you did n’t like that?”

“I liked it immensely—for myself! But did n’t like it for Gordon; and I must do myself the justice to say that I thought more of him than of myself.”

“You were an excellent friend,” said Angela, simply.

“I believe I was. And I am so still,” Bernard added.

She shook her head sadly.

“Poor Mr. Wright!”

“He is a dear good fellow,” said Bernard.

“Thoroughly good, and dear, doubtless to his wife, the affectionate Blanche.”

“You don’t like him—you don’t like her,” said Bernard.

“Those are two very different matters. I am very sorry for Mr. Wright.”

“You need n’t be that. He is doing very well.”

“So you have already informed me. But I am sorry for him, all the same.”

“That does n’t answer my question,” Bernard exclaimed, with a certain irritation. “What part were you playing?”

“What part do you think?”

“Have n’t I told you I gave it up, long ago?”

Angela stood with her back to the fire, looking at him; her hands were locked behind her.

“Did it ever strike you that my position at Baden was a charming one?—knowing that I had been handed over to you to be put under the microscope—like an insect with a pin stuck through it!”