t--that she had ever received an
expression of admiration from another man? This was not likely; it was
not likely, at least, that Miss Vivian wished to pass for a prodigy of
innocence; for if to be admired is to pay a tribute to corruption, it
was perfectly obvious that so handsome a girl must have tasted of the
tree of knowledge. As for her being in love with Gordon Wright, that of
course was another affair, and Bernard did not pretend, as yet, to have
an opinion on this point, beyond hoping very much that she might be.

He was not wrong in the impression of her good looks that he had carried
away from the short interview at Siena. She had a charmingly chiselled
face, with a free, pure outline, a clear, fair complexion, and the eyes
and hair of a dusky beauty. Her features had a firmness which
suggested tranquillity, and yet her expression was light and quick, a
combination--or a contradiction--which gave an original stamp to her
beauty. Bernard remembered that he had thought it a trifle "bold"; but
he now perceived that this had been but a vulgar misreading of her dark,
direct, observant eye. The eye was a charming one; Bernard discovered in
it, little by little, all sorts of things; and Miss Vivian was, for the
present, simply a handsome, intelligent, smiling girl. He gave her an
opportunity to make an allusion to Siena; he said to her that his friend
told him that she and her mother had been spending the winter in Italy.

"Oh yes," said Angela Vivian; "we were in the far south; we were five
months at Sorrento."

"And nowhere else?"

"We spent a few days in Rome. We usually prefer the quiet places; that
is my mother's taste."

"It was not your mother's taste, then," said Bernard, "that brought you
to Baden?"

She looked at him a moment.

"You mean that Baden is not quiet?"

Longueville glanced about at the moving, murmuring crowd, at the lighted
windows of the Conversation-house, at the great orchestra perched up in
its pagoda.

"This is not my idea of absolute tranquillity."

"Nor mine, either," said Miss Vivian. "I am not fond of absolute
tranquillity."

"How do you arrange it, then, with your mother?"

Again she looked at him a moment, with her clever, slightly mocking
smile.

"As you see. By making her come where I wish."

"You have a strong will," said Bernard. "I see that."

"No. I have simply a weak mother. But I make sacrifices too, sometimes."

"What do you call sacrifices?"

"Well, s