thinking well. To let
it gradually filter into one's mind, through a superficial complexity
of more reverent preconceptions, that she was an extremely clever
coquette--this, surely, was not to think well! Bernard had luminous
glimpses of another situation, in which Angela Vivian's coquetry should
meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to
be entered on the credit side of Wright's account. Bernard wiped his
pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflection, and felt like a
grizzled old book-keeper, of incorruptible probity. He saw her, as
I have said, very often; she continued to break her vow of shutting
herself up, and at the end of a fortnight she had reduced it to
imperceptible particles. On four different occasions, presenting himself
at Mrs. Vivian's lodgings, Bernard found Angela there alone. She made
him welcome, receiving him as an American girl, in such circumstances,
is free to receive the most gallant of visitors. She smiled and talked
and gave herself up to charming gayety, so that there was nothing
for Bernard to say but that now at least she was off her guard with
a vengeance. Happily he was on his own! He flattered himself that he
remained so on occasions that were even more insidiously relaxing--when,
in the evening, she strolled away with him to parts of the grounds of
the Conversation-house, where the music sank to sweeter softness and
the murmur of the tree-tops of the Black Forest, stirred by the warm
night-air, became almost audible; or when, in the long afternoons, they
wandered in the woods apart from the others--from Mrs. Vivian and the
amiable object of her more avowed solicitude, the object of the sportive
adoration of the irrepressible, the ever-present Lovelock. They were
constantly having parties in the woods at this time--driving over
the hills to points of interest which Bernard had looked out in
the guide-book. Bernard, in such matters, was extremely alert and
considerate; he developed an unexpected talent for arranging excursions,
and he had taken regularly into his service the red-waistcoated
proprietor of a big Teutonic landau, which had a courier's seat behind
and was always at the service of the ladies. The functionary in the
red waistcoat was a capital charioteer; he was constantly proposing
new drives, and he introduced our little party to treasures of romantic
scenery.

CHAPTER XIII

More than a fortnight had elapsed, but Gordon Wright had