parated
he asked me if I heard from you. 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'every day.'
'And does he speak of me?' 'Never!' I answered; and I think he looked
disappointed." Bernard had, in fact, in writing to Angela, scarcely
mentioned his name. "He had not been here for two days," she continued,
at the end of a week; "but last evening, very late--too late for a
visitor--he came in. Mamma had left the drawing-room, and I was sitting
alone; I immediately saw that we had reached a crisis. I thought
at first he was going to tell me that Blanche had carried out his
prediction; but I presently saw that this was not where the shoe
pinched; and, besides, I knew that mamma was watching her too closely.
'How can I have ever been such a dull-souled idiot?' he broke out, as
soon as he had got into the room. 'I like to hear you say that,' I said,
'because it does n't seem to me that you have been at all wise.' 'You
are cleverness, kindness, tact, in the most perfect form!' he went on.
As a veracious historian I am bound to tell you that he paid me a bushel
of compliments, and thanked me in the most flattering terms for my
having let him bore me so for a week. 'You have not bored me,' I
said; 'you have interested me.' 'Yes,' he cried, 'as a curious case of
monomania. It 's a part of your kindness to say that; but I know I have
bored you to death; and the end of it all is that you despise me. You
can't help despising me; I despise myself. I used to think that I was a
man, but I have given that up; I am a poor creature! I used to think I
could take things quietly and bear them bravely. But I can't! If it were
not for very shame I could sit here and cry to you.' 'Don't mind me,'
I said; 'you know it is a part of our agreement that I was not to
be critical.' 'Our agreement?' he repeated, vaguely. 'I see you have
forgotten it,' I answered; 'but it does n't in the least matter; it is
not of that I wish to talk to you. All the more that it has n't done you
a particle of good. I have been extremely nice with you for a week;
but you are just as unhappy now as you were at the beginning. Indeed, I
think you are rather worse.' 'Heaven forgive me, Miss Vivian, I believe
I am!' he cried. 'Heaven will easily forgive you; you are on the wrong
road. To catch up with your happiness, which has been running away from
you, you must take another; you must travel in the same direction as
Blanche; you must not separate yourself from your wife.' At the sound of
Blanche's n