"Never mind the rudeness. I will do the same by you some day, to make it
up. Which of them should you think me likely to have taken a fancy to?
On general grounds, now, from what you know of me?" He proposed this
problem with an animated eye.

"You forget," his friend said, "that though I know, thank heaven, a good
deal of you, I know very little of either of those girls. I have had too
little evidence."

"Yes, but you are a man who notices. That 's why I wanted you to come."

"I spoke only to Miss Evers."

"Yes, I know you have never spoken to Miss Vivian." Gordon Wright stood
looking at Bernard and urging his point as he pronounced these words.
Bernard felt peculiarly conscious of his gaze. The words represented an
illusion, and Longueville asked himself quickly whether it were not his
duty to dispel it. The answer came more slowly than the question,
but still it came, in the shape of a negative. The illusion was but a
trifling one, and it was not for him, after all, to let his friend know
that he had already met Miss Vivian. It was for the young girl
herself, and since she had not done so--although she had the
opportunity--Longueville said to himself that he was bound in honor not
to speak. These reflections were very soon made, but in the midst of
them our young man, thanks to a great agility of mind, found time
to observe, tacitly, that it was odd, just there, to see his "honor"
thrusting in its nose. Miss Vivian, in her own good time, would
doubtless mention to Gordon the little incident of Siena. It was
Bernard's fancy, for a moment, that he already knew it, and that the
remark he had just uttered had an ironical accent; but this impression