y signified his withdrawal, and that
he had now gone away because, after giving the girl up, he wished
very naturally not to meet her again. This was, on Bernard's part,
a sufficiently coherent view of the case; but nevertheless, an hour
afterward, as he strolled along the Lichtenthal Alley, he found himself
stopping suddenly and exclaiming under his breath--"Have I done her
an injury? Have I affected her prospects?" Later in the day he said to
himself half a dozen times that he had simply warned Gordon against an
incongruous union.

CHAPTER XV

Now that Gordon was gone, at any rate, gone for good, and not to return,
he felt a sudden and singular sense of freedom. It was a feeling of
unbounded expansion, quite out of proportion, as he said to himself, to
any assignable cause. Everything suddenly appeared to have become very
optional; but he was quite at a loss what to do with his liberty. It
seemed a harmless use to make of it, in the afternoon, to go and pay
another visit to the ladies who lived at the confectioner's. Here,
however, he met a reception which introduced a fresh element of
perplexity into the situation that Gordon had left behind him. The door
was opened to him by Mrs. Vivian's maid-servant, a sturdy daughter
of the Schwartzwald, who informed him that the ladies--with much
regret--were unable to receive any one.

"They are very busy--and they are ill," said the young woman, by way of
explanation.

Bernard was disappointed, and he felt like arguing the case.

"Surely," he said, "they are not both ill and busy! When you make
excuses, you should make them agree with each other."

The Teutonic soubrette fixed her round blue eyes a minute upon the patch
of blue sky revealed to her by her open door.

"I say what I can, lieber Herr. It 's not my fault if I 'm not so clever
as a French mamsell. One of the ladies is busy, the other is ill. There
you have it."

"Not quite," said Bernard. "You must remember that there are three of
them."

"Oh, the little one--the little one weeps."

"Miss Evers weeps!" exclaimed Bernard, to whom the vision of this young
lady in tears had never presented itself.

"That happens to young ladies when they are unhappy," said the girl; and
with an artless yet significant smile she carried a big red hand to the
left side of a broad bosom.

"I am sorry she is unhappy; but which of the other ladies is ill?"

"The mother is very busy."

"And the daughter is ill?"