“You mean that I seem to doubt your abnegation?”
“You seem to insinuate that I had nothing to renounce. I gave up—I gave up—” and she looked about her, considering a little—“I gave up society.”
“I am glad you remember what it was,” said Bernard. “If I have seemed uncivil, let me make it up. When a woman speaks of giving up society, what she means is giving up admiration. You can never have given up that—you can never have escaped from it. You must have found it even at Sorrento.”
“It may have been there, but I never found it. It was very respectful—it never expressed itself.”
“That is the deepest kind,” said Bernard.
“I prefer the shallower varieties,” the young girl answered.
“Well,” said Bernard, “you must remember that although shallow admiration expresses itself, all the admiration that expresses itself is not shallow.”
Miss Vivian hesitated a moment.
“Some of it is impertinent,” she said, looking straight at him, rather gravely.
Bernard hesitated about as long.
“When it is impertinent it is shallow. That comes to the same thing.”
The young girl frowned a little.
“I am not sure that I understand—I am rather stupid. But you see how right I am in my taste for such places as this. I have to come here to hear such ingenious remarks.”
“You should add that my coming, as well, has something to do with it.”
“Everything!” said Miss Vivian.
“Everything? Does no one else make ingenious remarks? Does n’t my friend Wright?”
“Mr. Wright says excellent things, but I should not exactly call them ingenious remarks.”
“It is not what Wright says; it ‘s what he does. That ‘s the charm!” said Bernard.
His companion was silent for a moment. “That ‘s not usually a charm; good conduct is not thought pleasing.”
“It surely is not thought the reverse!” Bernard exclaimed.
“It does n’t rank—in the opinion of most people—among the things that make men agreeable.”
“It depends upon what you call agreeable.”
“Exactly so,” said Miss Vivian. “It all depends on that.”
“But the agreeable,” Bernard went on—“it is n’t after all, fortunately, such a subtle idea! The world certainly is agreed to think that virtue is a beautiful thing.”
Miss Vivian dropped her eyes a moment, and then, looking up,
“Is it a charm?” she asked.
“For me there is no charm without it,” Bernard declared.
“I am afraid that for me there is,” said the young girl.
Bernard was puzzled—he who was not often puzzled. His companion struck him as altogether too clever to be likely to indulge in a silly affectation of cynicism. And yet, without this, how could one account for her sneering at virtue?
“You talk as if you had sounded the depths of vice!” he said, laughing. “What do you know about other than virtuous charms?”
“I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it was very tiresome.”
“Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is never tiresome.”
Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye.
“What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!”
This was a touching reflection, and it might have gone further had not the conversation been interrupted by Mrs. Vivian’s appealing to her daughter to aid a defective recollection of a story about a Spanish family they had met at Biarritz, with which she had undertaken to entertain Gordon Wright. After this, the little circle was joined by a party of American friends who were spending a week at Baden, and the conversation became general.
CHAPTER VII
But on the following evening, Bernard again found himself seated in friendly colloquy with this interesting girl, while Gordon Wright discoursed with her mother on one side, and little Blanche Evers chattered to the admiring eyes of Captain Lovelock on the other.
“You and your mother are very kind to that little girl,” our hero said; “you must be a great advantage to her.”
Angela Vivian directed her eyes to her neighbors, and let them rest a while on the young girl’s little fidgeting figure and her fresh, coquettish face. For some moments she said nothing, and to Longueville, turning over several things in his mind, and watching her, it seemed that her glance was one of disfavor. He divined, he scarcely knew how, that her esteem for her pretty companion was small.
“I don’t know that I am very kind,” said Miss Vivian. “I have done nothing in particular for her.”
“Mr. Wright tells me you came to this place mainly on her account.”
“I came for myself,” said Miss Vivian. “The consideration you speak of perhaps had weight with my mother.”
“You are not an easy person to say appreciative things to,” Bernard rejoined. “One is tempted to say them; but you don’t take them.”
The young girl colored as she listened to this observation.
“I don’t think you know,” she murmured, looking away. Then, “Set it down to modesty,” she added.
“That, of course, is what I have done. To what else could one possibly attribute an indifference to compliments?”
“There is something else. One might be proud.”
“There you are again!” Bernard exclaimed. “You won’t even let me praise your modesty.”
“I would rather you should rebuke my pride.”
“That is so humble a speech that it leaves no room for rebuke.”
For a moment Miss Vivian said nothing.
“Men are singularly base,” she declared presently, with a little smile. “They don’t care in the least to say things that might help a person. They only care to say things that may seem effective and agreeable.”
“I see: you think that to say agreeable things is a great misdemeanor.”
“It comes from their vanity,” Miss Vivian went on, as if she had not heard him. “They wish to appear agreeable and get credit for cleverness and tendresse, no matter how silly it would be for another person to believe them.”
Bernard was a good deal amused, and a little nettled.
“Women, then,” he said, “have rather a fondness for producing a bad impression—they like to appear disagreeable?”
His companion bent her eyes upon her fan for a moment as she opened and closed it.
“They are capable of resigning themselves to it—for a purpose.”
Bernard was moved to extreme merriment.
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know that I mean for a purpose,” said Miss Vivian; “but for a necessity.”
“Ah, what an odious necessity!”
“Necessities usually are odious. But women meet them. Men evade them and shirk them.”
“I contest your proposition. Women are themselves necessities; but they are not odious ones!” And Bernard added, in a moment, “One could n’t evade them, if they were!”
“I