Page:Confidence (London, Macmillan & Co., 1921).djvu/200

 "I am clever enough to promise that."

"I think you are good enough to keep it," said Mrs. Vivian. She looked as happy as she said, and her happiness gave her a communicative, confidential tendency. "It is very strange how things come about—how the wheel turns round," she went on. "I suppose there is no harm in my telling you that I believe she always cared for you."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" said Bernard, with almost filial reproachfulness.

"How could I? I don't go about the world offering my daughter to people—especially to indifferent people."

"At Baden you didn't think I was indifferent. You were afraid of my not being indifferent enough."

Mrs. Vivian coloured.

"Ah, at Baden I was a little too anxious!"

"Too anxious I shouldn't speak to your daughter," said Bernard, laughing.

"At Baden," Mrs. Vivian went on, "I had views. But I haven't any now—I have given them up; I have no more views."

"That makes your acceptance of me very flattering!" Bernard exclaimed, laughing still more gaily.

"I have something better," said Mrs. Vivian, laying her finger-tips on his arm. "I have confidence!"

Bernard did his best to encourage this gracious sentiment, and it seemed to him that there was something yet to be done to implant it more firmly in Angela's breast.

"I have a confession to make to you," he said to her one day. "I wish you would listen to it."

"Is it something very horrible?" Angela asked.

"Something very horrible indeed. I once did you an injury."

"An injury?" she repeated, in a tone which 192