m clever enough to promise that."

"I think you are good enough to keep it," said Mrs. Vivian. She looked
as happy as she said, and her happiness gave her a communicative,
confidential tendency. "It is very strange how things come about--how
the wheel turns round," she went on. "I suppose there is no harm in my
telling you that I believe she always cared for you."

"Why did n't you tell me before?" said Bernard, with almost filial
reproachfulness.

"How could I? I don't go about the world offering my daughter to
people--especially to indifferent people."

"At Baden you did n't think I was indifferent. You were afraid of my not
being indifferent enough."

Mrs. Vivian colored.

"Ah, at Baden I was a little too anxious!"

"Too anxious I should n't speak to your daughter!" said Bernard,
laughing.

"At Baden," Mrs. Vivian went on, "I had views. But I have n't any now--I
have given them up."

"That makes your acceptance of me very flattering!" Bernard exclaimed,
laughing still more gaily.

"I have something better," said Mrs. Vivian, laying her finger-tips on
his arm. "I have confidence."

Bernard did his best to encourage this gracious sentiment, and it seemed
to him that there was something yet to be done to implant it more firmly
in Angela's breast.

"I have a confession to make to you," he said to her one day. "I wish
you would listen to it."

"Is it something very horrible?" Angela asked.

"Something very horrible indeed. I once did you an injury."

"An injury?" she repeated, in a tone which seemed to reduce the offence
to contemptible proportions by simple vagueness of mind about it.

"I don't know what to call it," said Bernard. "A poor service--an
ill-turn."

Angela gave a shrug, or rather an imitation of a shrug; for she was not
a shrugging person.

"I never knew it."

"I misrepresented you to Gordon Wright," Bernard went on.

"Why do you speak to me of him?" she asked rather sadly.

"Does it displease you?"

She hesitated a little.

"Yes, it displeases me. If your confession has anything to do with him,
I would rather not hear it."

Bernard returned to the subject another time--he had plenty of
opportunities. He spent a portion of every day in the company of these
dear women; and these days were the happiest of his life. The autumn
weather was warm and soothing, the quartier was still deserted, and the
uproar of the great city, which seemed a hundred miles away, reached
them through