are not my idea of an angel," retorted Blanche.

"I 'm afraid you 'll never learn what the angels are really like," said
the Captain. "That 's why Miss Evers got Mrs. Vivian to take rooms over
the baker's--so that she could have ices sent up several times a day.
Well, I 'm bound to say the baker's ices are not bad."

"Considering that they have been baked! But they affect the mind,"
Blanche went on. "They would have affected Captain Lovelock's--only he
has n't any. They certainly affected Angela's--putting it into her head,
at eleven o'clock, to come out to walk."

Angela did nothing whatever to defend herself against this ingenious
sally; she simply stood there in graceful abstraction. Bernard was
vaguely vexed at her neither looking at him nor speaking to him; her
indifference seemed a contravention of that right of criticism which
Gordon had bequeathed to him.

"I supposed people went to bed at eleven o'clock," he said.

Angela glanced about her, without meeting his eye.

"They seem to have gone."

Miss Evers strolled on, and her Captain of course kept pace with her; so
that Bernard and Miss Vivian were left standing together. He looked at
her a moment in silence, but her eye still avoided his own.

"You are remarkably inconsistent," Bernard presently said. "You take a
solemn vow of seclusion this afternoon, and no sooner have you taken it
than you proceed to break it in this outrageous manner."

She looked at him now--a long time--longer than she had ever done
before.

"This is part of the examination, I suppose," she said.

Bernard hesitated an instant.

"What examination?"

"The one you have undertaken--on Mr. Wright's behalf."

"What do you know about that?"

"Ah, you admit it then?" the girl exclaimed, with an eager laugh.

"I don't in the least admit it," said Bernard, conscious only for the
moment of the duty of loyalty to his friend and feeling that negation
here was simply a point of honor.

"I trust more to my own conviction than to your denial. You have engaged
to bring your superior wisdom and your immense experience to bear upon
me! That 's the understanding."

"You must think us a pretty pair of wiseacres," said Bernard.

"There it is--you already begin to answer for what I think. When Mr.
Wright comes back you will be able to tell him that I am 'outrageous'!"
And she turned away and walked on, slowly following her companions.

"What do you care what I tell him?" Bernard asked. "