“When I come back? Pray, where am I going?”
“You will leave Paris for a fortnight--as I promised our poor friend.”
“My dear girl, you are ridiculous! Your promising it was almost as childish as his asking it.”
“To play with a child you must be childish. Just see the effect of this abominable passion of love, which you have been crying up to me so! By its operation Gordon Wright, the most sensible man of our acquaintance, is reduced to the level of infancy! If you will only go away, I will manage him.”
“You certainly manage me! Pray, where shall I go?”
“Wherever you choose. I will write to you every day.”
“That will be an inducement,” said Bernard. “You know I have never received a letter from you.”
“I write the most delightful ones!” Angela exclaimed; and she succeeded in making him promise to start that night for London.
She had just done so when Mrs. Vivian presented herself, and the good lady was not a little astonished at being informed of his intention.
“You surely are not going to give up my daughter to oblige Mr. Wright?” she observed.
“Upon my word, I feel as if I were!” said Bernard.
“I will explain it, dear mamma,” said Angela. “It is very interesting. Mr. Wright has made a most fearful scene; the state of things between him and Blanche is dreadful.”
“She does like it--she told Gordon so,” said Bernard. “I don’t know what she is up to! Gordon has taken leave of his wits; he wishes to put away his wife.”
“To repudiate her, as the historians say!”
“To repudiate little Blanche!” murmured Mrs. Vivian, as if she were struck with the incongruity of the operation.
“I mean to keep them together,” said Angela, with a firm decision.
Her mother looked at her with admiration.
The two ladies had such an air of mysterious competence to the task they had undertaken that it seemed to Bernard that nothing was left to him but to retire into temporary exile. He accordingly betook himself to London, where he had social resources which would, perhaps, make exile endurable. He found himself, however, little disposed to avail himself of these resources, and he treated himself to no pleasures but those of memory and expectation. He ached with a sense of his absence from Mrs. Vivian’s deeply familiar sky-parlor, which seemed to him for the time the most sacred spot on earth--if on earth it could be called--and he consigned to those generous postal receptacles which ornament with their brilliant hue the London street-corners, an inordinate number of the most voluminous epistles that had ever been dropped into them. He took long walks, alone, and thought all the way of Angela, to whom, it seemed to him, that the character of ministering angel was extremely becoming. She was faithful to her promise of writing to him every day, and she was an angel who wielded--so at least Bernard thought, and he was particular about letters--a very ingenious pen. Of course she had only one topic--the success of her operations with regard to Gordon. “Mamma has undertaken Blanche,” she wrote, “and I am devoting myself to Mr. W. It is really very interesting.” She told Bernard all about it in detail, and he also found it interesting; doubly so, indeed, for it must be confessed that the charming figure of the mistress of his affections attempting to heal a great social breach with her light and delicate hands, divided his attention pretty equally with the distracted, the distorted, the almost ludicrous, image of his old friend.