Confidence

First serialised in Scribners magazine in 1879 and published in full during the same year, Confidence is a light romantic comedy of marriage declined and accepted. The plot centres upon three characters, Bernie Longueville, an artist, Gordy Wright, a scientist, and Angie Vivien without occupation but a strong, gregarious female. When Gordy asks Bernie whether he should marry Angela, Bernie, having already met her, advises against it. Yet later, when Bernie again meet Angela, he realises that he loves her himself and proposes.

Excerpt:
He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon Sienese architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and the geological idiosyncrasies of the Apennines. If he had only gone to the other inn, that nice-looking girl whom he had seen passing under the dusky portal with her face turned away from him might have broken bread.