Bernard was puzzled--he who was not often puzzled. His companion
struck him as altogether too clever to be likely to indulge in a silly
affectation of cynicism. And yet, without this, how could one account
for her sneering at virtue?
"You talk as if you had sounded the depths of vice!" he said, laughing.
"What do you know about other than virtuous charms?"
"I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it
was very tiresome."
"Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is
never tiresome."
Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye.
"What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!"
This was a touching reflection, and it might have gone further had not
the conversation been interrupted by Mrs. Vivian's appealing to her
daughter to aid a defective recollection of a story about a Spanish
family they had met at Biarritz, with which she had undertaken to
entertain Gordon Wright. After this, the little circle was joined by
a party of American friends who were spending a week at Baden, and the
conversation became general.
CHAPTER VII
But on the following evening, Bernard again found himself seated in
friendly colloquy with this interesting girl, while Gordon Wright
discoursed with her mother on one side, and little Blanche Evers
chattered to the admiring eyes of Captain Lovelock on the other.
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