Your word had such weight with me!" "How many times more would you have wished to be refused, and how many refusals would have been required to give me my liberty ?" asked Bernard.
"That question means nothing, because you never knew that I had again offered myself to Miss Vivian." "No; you told me very little, considering all that you made me tell you." "I told you beforehand that I should do exactly as I chose." "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.