CONFIDENCE
thank you, and you shall have them again—at the earliest opportunity. My earliest convenience—will that do? Damn it, it is a convenience, isn't it? You make your conditions? My dear fellow, I accept them in advance. That I'm not to follow up Miss Evers; is that what you mean? Have you been commissioned by the family to buy me off? It's devilish cruel to take advantage of my poverty! Though I'm poor, I'm honest. But I am honest, my dear Longueville; that's the point. I'll give you my word, and I'll keep it. I won't go near that girl again—I won't think of her till I've got rid of your fifty pounds. It's a dreadful encouragement to extravagance, but that's your look-out. I'll stop for their beastly races, and the young lady shall be sacred."
Longueville called the next morning at Mrs. Vivian's, and learned that the three ladies had left Baden by the early train, a couple of hours before. This fact produced in his mind a variety of emotions—surprise, annoyance, embarrassment. In spite of his effort to think it natural they should go, he found something precipitate and inexplicable in the manner of their going, and he declared to himself that one of the party at least had been unkind and ungracious in not giving him a chance to say goodbye. He took refuge by anticipation, as it were, in this reflexion whenever, for the next three or four days, he foresaw himself stopping short, as he had done before, and asking himself whether he had done an injury to Angela Vivian. This was an idle and unpracticable question, inasmuch as the answer was not forthcoming; whereas it was quite simple and conclusive to say, without the note of interrogation, that she was, in spite of many attractive points, an abrupt and capricious young woman. During the three or four days in question, Bernard lingered on
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