ena.
To make the vision complete, Mrs. Vivian took it into her head to utter
the same words.

"I am sure you think she is a strange girl."

Bernard recognized them, and he gave a light laugh.

"You told me that the first time you ever saw me--in that quiet little
corner of an Italian town."

Mrs. Vivian gave a little faded, elderly blush.

"Don't speak of that," she murmured, glancing at the open window. "It
was a little accident of travel."

"I am dying to speak of it," said Bernard. "It was such a charming
accident for me! Tell me this, at least--have you kept my sketch?"

Mrs. Vivian colored more deeply and glanced at the window again.

"No," she just whispered.

Bernard looked out of the window too. Angela was leaning against the
railing of the balcony, in profile, just as she had stood while he
painted her, against the polished parapet at Siena. The young man's eyes
rested on her a moment, then, as he glanced back at her mother:

"Has she kept it?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Vivian, with decision.

The decision was excessive--it expressed the poor lady's distress at
having her veracity tested. "Dear little daughter of the Puritans--she
can't tell a fib!" Bernard exclaimed to himself. And with this
flattering conclusion he took leave of her.

CHAPTER XII

It was affirmed at an early stage of this narrative that he was a young
man of a contemplative and speculative turn, and he had perhaps never
been more true to his character than during an hour or two that
evening as he sat by himself on the terrace of the Conversation-house,
surrounded by the crowd of its frequenters, but lost in his meditations.
The place was full of movement and sound, but he had tilted back his
chair against the great green box of an orange-tree, and in this easy
attitude, vaguely and agreeably conscious of the music, he directed his
gaze to the star-sprinkled vault of the night. There were people coming
and going whom he knew, but he said nothing to any one--he preferred to
be alone; he found his own company quite absorbing. He felt very happy,
very much amused, very curiously preoccupied. The feeling was a singular
one. It partook of the nature of intellectual excitement. He had a
sense of having received carte blanche for the expenditure of his wits.
Bernard liked to feel his intelligence at play; this is, perhaps, the
highest luxury of a clever man. It played at present over the whole
field of Angela Vi