'I mean that the young man has six thousand a year.'
'It 's no matter what he has—six thousand a year is n't much! And we don't do things in that way in our country. We have n't those horrid match-making arrangements that you have in your dreadful country. American mothers are not like English mothers.'
'Oh, any one can see, of course,' said Captain Lovelock, 'that Mr. Gordon Wright is dying of love for Miss Vivian.'
'I can't see it!' cried Blanche.
'He dies easier than I, eh?'
'I wish you would die!' said Blanche. 'At any rate, Angela is not dying of love for Mr. Wright.'
'Well, she will marry him all the same,' Lovelock declared.
Blanche Evers glanced at Bernard.
'Why don't you contradict that?' she asked. 'Why don't you speak up for your friend?'
'I am quite ready to speak for my friend,' said Bernard, 'but I am not ready to speak for Miss Vivian.'
'Well, I am,' Blanche declared. 'She won't marry him.'
'If she does n't, I 'll eat my hat!' said Captain Lovelock. 'What do you mean,' he went on, 'by saying that in America a pretty girl's mother does n't care for a young fellow's property?'
'Well, they don't—we consider that dreadful. Why don't you say so, Mr. Longueville?' Blanche demanded. 'I never saw any one take things so quietly. Have n't you got any patriotism?'
'My patriotism is modified by an indisposition to generalize,' said Bernard, laughing. 'On this point permit me not to generalize. I am interested in the particular case—in ascertaining whether Mrs. Vivian thinks very often of Gordon Wright's income.'
Miss Evers gave a little toss of disgust.
'If you are so awfully impartial, you had better go and ask her.'
'That 's a good idea—I think I will go and ask her,' said Bernard.
Captain Lovelock returned to his argument.
'Do you mean to say that your mother would be indifferent to the fact that I have n't a shilling in the world?'
'Indifferent?' Blanche demanded. 'Oh no, she would be sorry for you. She is very charitable—she would give you a shilling!'
'She would n't let you marry me,' said Lovelock.
'She would n't have much trouble to prevent it!' cried the young girl.
Bernard had had enough of this intellectual fencing.
'Yes, I will go and ask Mrs. Vivian,' he repeated. And he left his companions to resume their walk.
CHAPTER X
It had seemed to him a good idea to interrogate Mrs. Vivian; but there are a great many good ideas that are never put into execution. As he approached her with a smile and a salutation, and, with the air of asking leave to take a liberty, seated himself in the empty chair beside her, he felt a humorous relish of her own probable dismay which relaxed the investigating impulse. His impulse was now simply to prove to her that he was the most unobjectionable fellow in the world—a proposition which resolved itself into several ingenious observations upon the weather, the music, the charms and the drawbacks of Baden, the merits of the volume that she held in her lap. If Mrs. Vivian should be annoyed, should be fluttered, Bernard would feel very sorry for her; there was nothing in the world that he respected more than the moral consciousness of a little Boston woman whose view of life was serious and whose imagination was subject to alarms. He held it to be a temple of delicacy, where one should walk on tiptoe, and he wished to exhibit to Mrs. Vivian the possible lightness of his own step. She herself was incapable of being rude or ungracious, and now that she was fairly confronted with the plausible object of her mistrust, she composed herself to her usual attitude of refined liberality. Her book was a volume of Victor Cousin.
'You must have an extraordinary power of abstracting your mind,' Bernard said to her, observing it. 'Studying philosophy at the Baden Kursaal strikes me as a real intellectual feat.'
'Don't you think we need a little philosophy here?'
'By all means—what we bring with us. But I should n't attempt the use of the text-book on the spot.'
'You should n't speak of yourself as if you were not clever,' said Mrs. Vivian. 'Every one says you are so very clever.'
Longueville stared; there was an unexpectedness in the speech and an incongruity in Mrs. Vivian's beginning to flatter him. He needed to remind himself that if she was a Bostonian, she was a Bostonian perverted.
'Ah, my dear madam, every one is no one,' he said, laughing.
'It was Mr. Wright, in particular,' she rejoined. 'He has always told us that.'
'He is blinded by friendship.'
'Ah yes, we know about your friendship,' said Mrs. Vivian. 'He has told us about that.'
'You are making him out a terrible talker!'
'We think he talks so well—we are so very fond of his conversation.'
'It 's usually excellent,' said Bernard. 'But it depends a good deal on the subject.'
