CONFIDENCE
as a justification when the former had failed to serve as a deterrent. When Bernard reproached himself for thinking too much of the girl, he drew comfort from the reflexion that he was not thinking well. To let it gradually filter into one's mind, through a superficial complexity of more reverent preconceptions, that she was an extremely clever coquette—this, surely, was not to think well! Bernard had luminous glimpses of another situation, in which Angela Vivian's coquetry might meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to be entered on the credit side of Gordon's account. Bernard wiped his pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflexion, and felt like a grizzled old book-keeper, of incorruptible probity. He saw her, as I have said, very often; she continued to break her vow of shutting herself up, and at the end of a fortnight she had reduced it to imperceptible particles. On four different occasions, presenting himself at Mrs. Vivian's lodgings, Bernard found Angela there alone. She made him welcome, receiving him as an American girl, in such circumstances, is free to receive the most gallant of visitors. She smiled and talked and gave herself up to charming gaiety, so that there was nothing for Bernard to say but that now at least she was off her guard with a vengeance. Happily he was on his own! He flattered himself that he remained so on occasions that were even more insidiously relaxing—when, in the evening, she strolled away with him to parts of the grounds of the Conversation-house, where the music sank to sweeter softness, and the murmur of the tree-tops of the Black Forest, stirred by the warm night air, became almost audible; or when, in the long afternoons, they wandered in the woods apart from the others—from Mrs. Vivian and the amiable object of her more avowed solicitude, the
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