It
cannot be said, however, that he suffered this fact to occupy at all
times the foreground of his consciousness. Bernard was like some great
painters; his foregrounds were very happily arranged. He heard nothing
of Mrs. Vivian and her daughter, beyond a rumor that they had gone to
Italy; and he learned, on apparently good authority, that Blanche Evers
had returned to New York with her mother. He wondered whether Captain
Lovelock was still in pawn at the Hotel de Hollande. If he did not allow
himself to wonder too curiously whether he had done a harm to Gordon,
it may be affirmed that he was haunted by the recurrence of that other
question, of which mention has already been made. Had he done a harm to
Angela Vivian, and did she know that he had done it? This inquiry by no
means made him miserable, and it was far from awaiting him regularly
on his pillow. But it visited him at intervals, and sometimes in the
strangest places--suddenly, abruptly, in the stillness of an Indian
temple, or amid the shrillness of an Oriental crowd. He became familiar
with it at last; he called it his Jack-in-the-box. Some invisible touch
of circumstance would press the spring, and the little image would
pop up, staring him in the face and grinning an interrogation.
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