It had seemed to him a good idea to interrogate Mrs. Vivian; but there
are a great many good ideas that are never put into execution. As he
approached her with a smile and a salutation, and, with the air of
asking leave to take a liberty, seated himself in the empty chair beside
her, he felt a humorous relish of her own probable dismay which relaxed
the investigating impulse. His impulse was now simply to prove to her
that he was the most unobjectionable fellow in the world--a proposition
which resolved itself into several ingenious observations upon the
weather, the music, the charms and the drawbacks of Baden, the merits of
the volume that she held in her lap. If Mrs. Vivian should be annoyed,
should be fluttered, Bernard would feel very sorry for her; there was
nothing in the world that he respected more than the moral consciousness
of a little Boston woman whose view of life was serious and whose
imagination was subject to alarms. He held it to be a temple of
delicacy, where one should walk on tiptoe, and he wished to exhibit
to Mrs. Vivian the possible lightness of his own step. She herself
was incapable of being rude or ungracious, and now that she was fairly
confronted with the plausible object of her mistrust, she composed
herself to her usual attitude of refined liberality. Her book was a
volume of Victor Cousin.

"You must have an extraordinary power of abstracting your mind," Bernard
said to her, observing it. "Studying philosophy at the Baden Kursaal
strikes me as a real intellectual feat."

"Don't you think we need a little philosophy here?"

"By all means--what we bring with us. But I should n't attempt the use
of the text-book on the spot."