The young man's eyes
rested on her a moment, then, as he glanced back at her mother:
"Has she kept it?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Vivian, with decision.
The decision was excessive--it expressed the poor lady's distress at
having her veracity tested. "Dear little daughter of the Puritans--she
can't tell a fib!" Bernard exclaimed to himself. And with this
flattering conclusion he took leave of her.
CHAPTER XII
It was affirmed at an early stage of this narrative that he was a young
man of a contemplative and speculative turn, and he had perhaps never
been more true to his character than during an hour or two that
evening as he sat by himself on the terrace of the Conversation-house,
surrounded by the crowd of its frequenters, but lost in his meditations.
The place was full of movement and sound, but he had tilted back his
chair against the great green box of an orange-tree, and in this easy
attitude, vaguely and agreeably conscious of the music, he directed his
gaze to the star-sprinkled vault of the night. There were people coming
and going whom he knew, but he said nothing to any one--he preferred to
be alone; he found his own company quite absorbing. He felt very happy,
very much amused, very curiously preoccupied.
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