“I don’t know what her regular habits are. I have n’t paid much attention to her. She is very pretty.”
“Wunderschon!” said Bernard. “But you were certainly talking to her last evening.”
“Of course I talk to her sometimes. She is totally different from Angela Vivian--not nearly so cultivated; but she seems very charming.”
“She certainly is not so wise as Miss Vivian.”
“That would be too much to ask, eh? But the Vivians, as kind as they are wise, have taken her under their protection.”
“Yes,” said Gordon, “they are to keep her another month or two. Her mother has gone to Marienbad, which I believe is thought a dull place for a young girl; so that, as they were coming here, they offered to bring her with them. Mrs. Evers is an old friend of Mrs. Vivian, who, on leaving Italy, had come up to Dresden to be with her. They spent a month there together; Mrs. Evers had been there since the winter. I think Mrs. Vivian really came to Baden-Baden--she would have preferred a less expensive place--to bring Blanche Evers. Her mother wanted her so much to come.”
“And was it for her sake that Captain Lovelock came, too?” Bernard asked.
“Of course you can’t be interested in that,” said Bernard smiling. “Who is Captain Lovelock?”
“He is an Englishman. I believe he is what ‘s called aristocratically connected--the younger brother of a lord, or something of that sort.”
“I have n’t talked with him much, but I doubt it. He is rather rakish; he plays a great deal.”
“But is that considered here a proof of rakishness?” asked Bernard. “Have n’t you played a little yourself?”
“Yes, I have played a little. I wanted to try some experiments. I had made some arithmetical calculations of probabilities, which I wished to test.”
“I am delighted with the reasons you give for amusing yourself! Arithmetical calculations!”
“I assure you they are the real reasons!” said Gordon, blushing a little.
“That ‘s just the beauty of it. You were not afraid of being ‘drawn in,’ as little Miss Evers says?”
“I am never drawn in, whatever the thing may be. I go in, or I stay out; but I am not drawn,” said Gordon Wright.
“You were not drawn into coming with Mrs. Vivian and her daughter from Dresden to this place?”
“I did n’t come with them; I came a week later.”