He ached with a sense of his absence from Mrs.
Vivian's deeply familiar sky-parlor, which seemed to him for the time the most sacred spot on earth--if on earth it could be called--and he consigned to those generous postal receptacles which ornament with their brilliant hue the London street-corners, an inordinate number of the most voluminous epistles that had ever been dropped into them.

He took long walks, alone, and thought all the way of Angela, to whom, it seemed to him, that the character of ministering angel was extremely becoming.
She was faithful to her promise of writing to him every day, and she was an angel who wielded--so at least Bernard thought, and he was particular about letters--a very ingenious pen.

Of course she had only one topic--the success of her operations with regard to Gordon.

"Mamma has undertaken Blanche," she wrote, "and I am devoting myself to Mr.W.It is really very interesting." She told Bernard all about it in detail, and he also found it interesting; doubly so, indeed, for it must be confessed that the charming figure of the mistress of his affections attempting to heal a great social breach with her light and delicate hands, divided his attention pretty equally with the distracted, the distorted, the almost ludicrous, image of his old friend.
Angela wrote that Gordon had come back to see her the day after his first visit, and had seemed greatly troubled on learning that Bernard had taken himself off.

"It was because you insisted on it, of course," he said; "it was not from feeling the justice of it himself." "I told him," said Angela, in her letter, "that I had made a point of it, but that we certainly ought to give you a little credit for it.