第76章

This observation struck Bernard as extremely ingenious and worthy of his mistress's fine intelligence; he greeted it with enthusiasm, and thought of it for the next twelve hours.

The more he thought of it the more felicitous it seemed to him, and he went to Mrs. Vivian's the next day almost for the express purpose of saying to Angela that, decidedly, she was right.

He was admitted by his old friend, the little femme de chambre, who had long since bestowed upon him, definitively, her confidence; and as in the ante-chamber he heard the voice of a gentleman raised and talking with some emphasis, come to him from the salon, he paused a moment, looking at her with an interrogative eye.

"Yes," said Mrs. Vivian's attendant, "I must tell Monsieur frankly that another gentleman is there. Moreover, what does it matter?

Monsieur would perceive it for himself!"

"Has he been here long?" asked Bernard.

"A quarter of an hour. It probably does n't seem long to the gentleman!"

"Is he alone with Mademoiselle?"

"He asked for Mademoiselle only. I introduced him into the salon, and Mademoiselle, after conversing a little while with Madame, consented to receive him. They have been alone together, as I have told Monsieur, since about three o'clock. Madame is in her own apartment. The position of Monsieur," added this discriminating woman, "certainly justifies him in entering the salon."

Bernard was quite of this opinion, and in a moment more he had crossed the threshold of the little drawing-room and closed the door behind him.

Angela sat there on a sofa, leaning back with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes fixed upon Gordon Wright, who stood squarely before her, as if he had been making her a resolute speech.

Her face wore a look of distress, almost of alarm; she kept her place, but her eyes gave Bernard a mute welcome.

Gordon turned and looked at him slowly from head to foot.

Bernard remembered, with a good deal of vividness, the last look his friend had given him in the Champs Elysees the day before; and he saw with some satisfaction that this was not exactly a repetition of that expression of cold horror. It was a question, however, whether the horror were changed for the better.

Poor Gordon looked intensely sad and grievously wronged.

The keen resentment had faded from his face, but an immense reproach was there--a heavy, helpless, appealing reproach.

Bernard saw that he had not a scene of violence to dread--and yet, when he perceived what was coming, he would almost have preferred violence. Gordon did not offer him his hand, and before Bernard had had time to say anything, began to speak again, as if he were going on with what he had been saying to Angela.

"You have done me a great wrong--you have done me a cruel wrong!

I have been telling it to Miss Vivian; I came on purpose to tell her.

I can't really tell her; I can't tell her the details; it 's too painful!

But you know what I mean! I could n't stand it any longer. I thought of going away--but I could n't do that. I must come and say what I feel.

I can't bear it now."

This outbreak of a passionate sense of injury in a man habitually so undemonstrative, so little disposed to call attention to himself, had in it something at once of the touching and the terrible.

Bernard, for an instant, felt almost bewildered; he asked himself whether he had not, after all, been a monster of duplicity.

He was guilty of the weakness of taking refuge in what is called, I believe, in legal phrase, a side-issue.

"Don't say all this before Angela!" he exclaimed, with a kind of artificial energy. "You know she is not in the least at fault, and that it can only give her pain. The thing is between ourselves."

Angela was sitting there, looking up at both the men. "I like to hear it," she said.

"You have a singular taste!" Bernard declared.

"I know it 's between ourselves," cried Gordon, "and that Miss Vivian is not at fault. She is only too lovely, too wise, too good! It is you and I that are at fault--horribly at fault!

You see I admit it, and you don't. I never dreamed that I should live to say such things as this to you; but I never dreamed you would do what you have done! It 's horrible, most horrible, that such a difference as this should come between two men who believed themselves--or whom I believed, at least--the best friends in the world. For it is a difference--it 's a great gulf, and nothing will ever fill it up. I must say so;

I can't help it. You know I don't express myself easily; so, if I break out this way, you may know what I feel.

I know it is a pain to Miss Vivian, and I beg her to forgive me.

She has so much to forgive that she can forgive that, too.

I can't pretend to accept it; I can't sit down and let it pass.

And then, it is n't only my feelings; it 's the right; it 's the justice. I must say to her that you have no right to marry her; and beg of her to listen to me and let you go."

"My dear Gordon, are you crazy?" Bernard demanded, with an energy which, this time at least, was sufficiently real.

"Very likely I am crazy. I am crazy with disappointment and the bitterness of what I have lost. Add to that the wretchedness of what I have found!"

"Ah, don't say that, Mr. Wright," Angela begged.

He stood for an instant looking at her, but not heeding her words.

"Will you listen to me again? Will you forget the wrong I did you?--my stupidity and folly and unworthiness? Will you blot out the past and let me begin again. I see you as clearly now as the light of that window.

Will you give me another chance?"

Angela turned away her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

"You do pain me!" she murmured.

"You go too far," said Bernard. "To what position does your extraordinary proposal relegate your wife?"

Gordon turned his pleading eyes on his old friend without a ray of concession; but for a moment he hesitated. "Don't speak to me of my wife. I have no wife."

"Ah, poor girl!" said Angela, springing up from the sofa.

"I am perfectly serious," Gordon went on, addressing himself again to her.