“I am sorry she is unhappy; but which of the other ladies is ill?”
“The mother is very busy.”
“And the daughter is ill?”
The young woman looked at him an instant, smiling again, and the light in her little blue eyes indicated confusion, but not perversity.
“No, the mamma is ill,” she exclaimed, “and the daughter is very busy. They are preparing to leave Baden.”
“To leave Baden? When do they go?”
“I don’t quite know, lieber Herr; but very soon.”
With this information Bernard turned away. He was rather surprised, but he reflected that Mrs. Vivian had not proposed to spend her life on the banks of the Oos, and that people were leaving Baden every day in the year. In the evening, at the Kursaal, he met Captain Lovelock, who was wandering about with an air of explosive sadness.
“Damn it, they ‘re going—yes, they ‘re going,” said the Captain, after the two young men had exchanged a few allusions to current events. “Fancy their leaving us in that heartless manner! It ‘s not the time to run away—it ‘s the time to keep your rooms, if you ‘re so lucky as to have any. The races begin next week and there ‘ll be a tremendous crowd. All the grand-ducal people are coming. Miss Evers wanted awfully to see the Grand Duke, and I promised her an introduction. I can’t make out what Mrs. Vivian is up to. I bet you a ten-pound note she ‘s giving chase. Our friend Wright has come back and gone off again, and Mrs. Vivian means to strike camp and follow. She ‘ll pot him yet; you see if she does n’t!”
“She is running away from you, dangerous man!” said Bernard.