Page:Confidence (London, Macmillan & Co., 1921).djvu/192

 "Ah, what pleasure that would have given me!"

"I mean, to tell you where we were, and that we should have been so happy to see you."

"I thank you for the intention. I suppose your daughter wouldn't let you carry it out."

"Angela is so peculiar," Mrs. Vivian said simply.

"You told me that the first time I saw you."

"Yes, at Siena," said Mrs. Vivian.

"I am glad to hear you speak frankly of that place!"

"Perhaps it's better," Mrs. Vivian murmured. She got up and went to the window; then stepping upon the balcony, she looked down a moment into the street. "She will come back in a moment," she said, coming into the room again. "She has gone to see a friend who lives just beside us. We don't mind about Siena now," she added softly.

Bernard understood her—understood this to be a retraction of the request she had made of him at Baden.

"Dear little woman," he said to himself, "she wants to marry her daughter still—only now she wants to marry her to me!"

He wished to show her that he understood her, and he was on the point of seizing her hand, to do he didn't know what—to hold it, to press it, to kiss it—when he heard the sharp twang of the bell at the door of the little apartment.

Mrs. Vivian fluttered away.

"It's Angela!" she cried; and she stood there waiting and listening, smiling at Bernard, with her handkerchief pressed to her lips.

In a moment the girl came into the drawing-room, and on seeing Bernard she stopped, with her hand on the door-knob. Her mother went to her and kissed her. 184