“I think it would have been more proper to come without you than with you,” Blanche declared. “You know you ‘re a dreadful character.” “I ‘m much worse when I ‘m away from you than when I ‘m with you,” said Lovelock. “You keep me in order.” The young girl gave a little cry. “I don’t know what you call order! You can’t be worse than you have been to-night.” Angela was not listening to this; she turned away a little, looking about at the empty garden. “This is the third time to-day that you have contradicted yourself,” he said. Though he spoke softly he went nearer to her; but she appeared not to hear him--she looked away. “You ought to have been there, Mr. Longueville,” Blanche went on. “We have had a most lovely night; we sat all the evening on Mrs. Vivian’s balcony, eating ices. To sit on a balcony, eating ices--that ‘s my idea of heaven.” “With an angel by your side,” said Captain Lovelock. “You are not my idea of an angel,” retorted Blanche. “I ‘m afraid you ‘ll never learn what the angels are really like,” said the Captain. “That ‘s why Miss Evers got Mrs. Vivian to take rooms over the baker’s--so that she could have ices sent up several times a day. Well, I ‘m bound to say the baker’s ices are not bad.” “Considering that they have been baked! But they affect the mind,” Blanche went on. “They would have affected Captain Lovelock’s--only he has n’t any. They certainly affected Angela’s--putting it into her head, at eleven o’clock, to come out to walk.” Angela did nothing whatever to defend herself against this ingenious sally; she simply stood there in graceful abstraction. Bernard was vaguely vexed at her neither looking at him nor speaking to him; her indifference seemed a contravention of that right of criticism which Gordon had bequeathed to him. “I supposed people went to bed at eleven o’clock,” he said. Angela glanced about her, without meeting his eye. “They seem to have gone.” Miss Evers strolled on, and her Captain of course kept pace with her; so that Bernard and Miss Vivian were left standing together. He looked at her a moment in silence, but her eye still avoided his own. “You are remarkably inconsistent,” Bernard presently said. “You take a solemn vow of seclusion this afternoon, and no sooner have you taken it than you proceed to break it in this outrageous manner.” She looked at him now--a long time--longer than she had ever done before. “This is part of the examination, I suppose,” she said. Bernard hesitated an instant. “What examination?” “The one you have undertaken--on Mr. Wright’s behalf.” “What do you know about that?” “Ah, you admit it then?” the girl exclaimed, with an eager laugh. “I don’t in the least admit it,” said Bernard, conscious only for the moment of the duty of loyalty to his friend and feeling that negation here was simply a point of honor.