Page:Confidence (London, Macmillan & Co., 1921).djvu/116

 He stood a moment in thought, and then he looked at his companion again.

"I think she would marry you—but I don't think she cares for you."

Poor Gordon flinched a little, but he clapped his hands together.

"Very good!" he exclaimed. "That's exactly how I want you to speak."

"Her mother has taken a great fancy to your fortune, and it has rubbed off on the girl, who has made up her mind that it would be a pleasant thing to have thirty thousand a year, and that her not caring for you is an unimportant detail."

"I see—I see," said Gordon, looking at his friend with an air of admiration for his frank and lucid way of putting things. Now that he had begun to be frank and lucid, Bernard found a charm in it, and the impulse under which he had spoken urged him almost violently forward.

"The mother and daughter have agreed together to bag you, and Angela, I am sure, has made a vow to be as nice to you after marriage as possible. Mrs. Vivian has insisted upon the importance of that; Mrs. Vivian is a great moralist."

Gordon kept gazing at his friend; he seemed positively fascinated.

"Yes, I have noticed that in Mrs. Vivian," he said.

"Ah, she's a very nice woman!"

"It's not true, then," said Gordon, "that you tried to make love to Angela?"

Bernard hesitated a single instant.

"No, it isn't true. I calumniated myself, to save her reputation. You insisted on my giving you a reason for my not liking her—I gave you that one."

"And your real reason—" 108