Bernard had shaken hands with Angela, looking at her intently; and in her eyes, as his own met them, it seemed to him that there was a gleam of mockery. At whom was she mocking—at Gordon, or at himself? Bernard was uncomfortable enough not to care to be mocked; but he felt even more sorry that Gordon should be.
“We also knew you were coming—Mr. Longueville had told us,” said Mrs. Vivian; “and we have been expecting the pleasure of seeing Blanche. Dear little Blanche!”
“Dear little Blanche will immediately come and see you,” Gordon replied.
“Immediately, we hope,” said Mrs. Vivian. “We shall be so very glad.” Bernard perceived that she wished to say something soothing and sympathetic to poor Gordon; having it, as he supposed, on her conscience that, after having once encouraged him to regard himself as indispensable (in the capacity of son-in-law) to her happiness, she should now present to him the spectacle of a felicity which had established itself without his aid. “We were so very much interested in your marriage,” she went on. “We thought it so—so delightful.”
Gordon fixed his eyes on the ground for a moment.
“I owe it partly to you,” he answered. “You had done so much for Blanche. You had so cultivated her mind and polished her manners that her attractions were doubled, and I fell an easy victim to them.”
He uttered these words with an exaggerated solemnity, the result of which was to produce, for a moment, an almost embarrassing silence. Bernard was rapidly becoming more and more impatient of his own embarrassment, and now he exclaimed, in a loud and jovial voice—
“Blanche makes victims by the dozen! I was a victim last winter; we are all victims!”
“Dear little Blanche!” Mrs. Vivian murmured again.
Angela had said nothing; she had simply stood there, making no attempt to address herself to Gordon, and yet with no affectation of reserve or of indifference. Now she seemed to feel the impulse to speak to him.