expect me to help her is perhaps to treat me as a friend; but she ought
to remember--or at least I ought to remember--that Gordon is an older
friend than she. Inviting me to help her as against my oldest friend--is
n't there a grain of impudence in that?"

It will be gathered that Bernard's meditations were not on the whole
favorable to this young lady, and it must be affirmed that he was
forcibly struck with an element of cynicism in her conduct. On the
evening of her so-called midnight visit to the Kursaal she had suddenly
sounded a note of sweet submissiveness which re-appeared again at
frequent intervals. She was gentle, accessible, tenderly gracious,
expressive, demonstrative, almost flattering. From his own personal
point of view Bernard had no complaint to make of this maidenly
urbanity, but he kept reminding himself that he was not in question and
that everything must be looked at in the light of Gordon's requirements.
There was all this time an absurd logical twist in his view of things.
In the first place he was not to judge at all; and in the second he was
to judge strictly on Gordon's behalf. This latter clause always served
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 reflection 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 should
meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to
be entered on the credit side of Wright's account. Bernard wiped his
pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflection, 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