“We think him brutal,” said Mrs. Vivian. “Please don’t praise Captain Lovelock.”
“Oh, I only want to be just.”
Mrs. Vivian for a moment said nothing.
“Do you want very much to be just?” she presently asked.
“It ‘s my most ardent desire.”
“I ‘m glad to hear that—and I can easily believe it,” said Mrs. Vivian.
Bernard gave her a grateful smile, but while he smiled, he asked himself a serious question. “Why the deuce does she go on flattering me?—You have always been very kind to me,” he said aloud.
“It ‘s on Mr. Wright’s account,” she answered demurely.
In speaking the words I have just quoted, Bernard Longueville had felt himself, with a certain compunction, to be skirting the edge of clever impudence; but Mrs. Vivian’s quiet little reply suggested to him that her cleverness, if not her impudence, was almost equal to his own. He remarked to himself that he had not yet done her justice.
“You bring everything back to Gordon Wright,” he said, continuing to smile.