la, simply.

"I believe I was. And I am so still," Bernard added.

She shook her head sadly.

"Poor Mr. Wright!"

"He is a dear good fellow," said Bernard.

"Thoroughly good, and dear, doubtless to his wife, the affectionate
Blanche."

"You don't like him--you don't like her," said Bernard.

"Those are two very different matters. I am very sorry for Mr. Wright."

"You need n't be that. He is doing very well."

"So you have already informed me. But I am sorry for him, all the same."

"That does n't answer my question," Bernard exclaimed, with a certain
irritation. "What part were you playing?"

"What part do you think?"

"Have n't I told you I gave it up, long ago?"

Angela stood with her back to the fire, looking at him; her hands were
locked behind her.

"Did it ever strike you that my position at Baden was a charming
one?--knowing that I had been handed over to you to be put under the
microscope--like an insect with a pin stuck through it!"

"How in the world did you know it? I thought we were particularly
careful."

"How can a woman help knowing such a thing? She guesses it--she
discovers it by instinct; especially if she be a proud woman."

"Ah," said Bernard, "if pride is a source of information, you must be a
prodigy of knowledge!"

"I don't know that you are particularly humble!" the girl retorted. "The
meekest and most submissive of her sex would not have consented to have
such a bargain as that made about her--such a trick played upon her!"

"My dearest Angela, it was no bargain--no trick!" Bernard interposed.

"It was a clumsy trick--it was a bad bargain!" she declared. "At any
rate I hated it--I hated the idea of your pretending to pass judgment
upon me; of your having come to Baden for the purpose. It was as if Mr.
Wright had been buying a horse and you had undertaken to put me through
my paces!"

"I undertook nothing--I declined to undertake."

"You certainly made a study of me--and I was determined you should get
your lesson wrong. I determined to embarrass, to mislead, to defeat you.
Or rather, I did n't determine; I simply obeyed a natural impulse of
self-defence--the impulse to evade the fierce light of criticism. I
wished to put you in the wrong."

"You did it all very well. You put me admirably in the wrong."

"The only justification for my doing it at all was my doing it well,"
said Angela.

"You were justified then! You must have hated me fiercely."

She turned her