"
"You should have allowed me the same liberty!"
"Liberty!" cried Gordon. "Had n't you liberty to range the whole world
over? Could n't he have found a thousand other women?"
"It is not for me to think so," said Angela, smiling a little.
Gordon looked at her a moment.
"Ah, you cared for him from the first!" he cried.
"I had seen him before I ever saw you," said the girl.
Bernard suppressed an exclamation. There seemed to flash through these
words a sort of retrospective confession which told him something that
she had never directly told him. She blushed as soon as she had spoken,
and Bernard found a beauty in this of which the brightness blinded him
to the awkward aspect of the fact she had just presented to Gordon. At
this fact Gordon stood staring; then at last he apprehended it--largely.
"Ah, then, it had been a plot between you!" he cried out.
Bernard and Angela exchanged a glance of pity.
"We had met for five minutes, and had exchanged a few words before I
came to Baden. It was in Italy--at Siena. It was a simple accident that
I never told you," Bernard explained.
"I wished that nothing should be said about it," said Angela.
"Ah, you loved him!" Gordon exclaimed.
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