Bernard sat listening, with his eyes on the ground.
“Oh no, he is simply at home writing letters.”
“I suppose he has a very large correspondence.”
“I really don’t know. Just now that I am with him he has a smaller one than usual.”
“Ah yes. When you are separated I suppose you write volumes to each other. But he must have a great many business letters.”
“It is very likely,” said Bernard. “And if he has, you may be sure he writes them.”
“Order and method!” Mrs. Vivian exclaimed. “With his immense property those virtues are necessary.”
“My dear Lovelock,” he said to himself, “you are not such a fool as you seem.--Gordon’s virtues are always necessary, doubtless,” he went on. “But should you say his property was immense?”
Mrs. Vivian made a delicate little movement of deprecation. “Oh, don’t ask me to say! I know nothing about it; I only supposed he was rich.”
“Oh, you fashionable young men have a standard of luxury!” said Mrs. Vivian, with a little laugh. “To a poverty-stricken widow such a fortune as Mr. Wright’s seems magnificent.”
“Don’t call me such horrible names!” exclaimed Bernard. “Our friend has certainly money enough and to spare.”
“That was all I meant. He once had occasion to allude to his property, but he was so modest, so reserved in the tone he took about it, that one hardly knew what to think.”
“He is ashamed of being rich,” said Bernard. “He would be sure to represent everything unfavorably.”
“That ‘s just what I thought!” This ejaculation was more eager than Mrs. Vivian might have intended, but even had it been less so, Bernard was in a mood to appreciate it. “I felt that we should make allowances for his modesty. But it was in very good taste,” Mrs. Vivian added.
“He ‘s a fortunate man,” said Bernard. “He gets credit for his good taste--and he gets credit for the full figure of his income as well!”
“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Vivian, rising lightly, as if to make her words appear more casual, “I don’t know the full figure of his income.”
She was turning away, and Bernard, as he raised his hat and separated from her, felt that it was rather cruel that he should let her go without enlightening her ignorance. But he said to himself that she knew quite enough. Indeed, he took a walk along the Lichtenthal Alley and carried out this line of reflection. Whether or no Miss Vivian were in love with Gordon Wright, her mother was enamored of Gordon’s fortune, and it had suddenly occurred to her that instead of treating the friend of her daughter’s suitor with civil mistrust, she would help her case better by giving him a hint of her state of mind and appealing to his sense of propriety. Nothing could be more natural than that Mrs. Vivian should suppose that Bernard desired his friend’s success; for, as our thoughtful hero said to himself, what she had hitherto taken it into her head to fear was not that Bernard should fall in love with her daughter, but that her daughter should fall in love with him. Watering-place life is notoriously conducive to idleness of mind, and Bernard strolled for half an hour along the overarched avenue, glancing alternately at these two insupposable cases.