to him to expect any puzzling variation, and the tone of her little, soft, thin voice instantly rang in his ear like an echo of yesterday's talk. He had already remarked to himself that after however long an interval one might see Blanche, she re-appeared with an air of familiarity. This was in some sense, indeed, a proof of the agreeable impression she made, and she looked exceedingly pretty as she now suddenly stopped on seeing our two gentlemen, and gave a little cry of surprise.
'Ah! I did n't know you were here. They never told me. Have you been waiting a long time? How d' ye do? You must think we are polite.' She held out her hand to Bernard, smiling very graciously. At Captain Lovelock she barely glanced. 'I hope you are very well,' she went on to Longueville; 'but I need n't ask that. You 're as blooming as a rose. What in the world has happened to you? You look so brilliant—so fresh. Can you say that to a man—that he looks fresh? Or can you only say that about butter and eggs?'
'It depends upon the man,' said Captain Lovelock. 'You can't say that a man 's fresh who spends his time in running about after you!'
'Ah, are you here?' cried Blanche with another little cry of surprise. 'I did n't notice you—I thought you were the waiter. This is what he calls running about after me,' she added, to Bernard; 'coming to breakfast without being asked. How queerly they have arranged the table!' she went on, gazing with her little elevated eyebrows at this piece of furniture. 'I always thought that in Paris, if they could n't do anything else, they could arrange a table. I don't like that at all—those horrid little dishes on each side! Don't you think those things ought to be off the table, Mr. Longueville? I don't like to see a lot of things I 'm not eating. And I told them to have some flowers—pray, where are the flowers? Do they call those things flowers? They look as if they had come out of the landlady's bonnet! Mr. Longueville, do look at those objects.'
'They are not like me—they are not very fresh,' laughed Bernard.
'It 's no great matter—we have not got to eat them,' growled Captain Lovelock.
'I should think you would expect to—with the luncheon you usually make!' rejoined Blanche. 'Since you are here, though I did n't ask you, you might as well make yourself useful. Will you be so good as to ring the bell? If Gordon expects that we are going to wait another quarter of an hour for him he exaggerates the patience of a long-suffering wife. If you are very curious to know what he is about, he is writing letters, by way of a change. He writes about eighty a day; his correspondents must be strong people! It 's a lucky thing for me that I am married to Gordon; if I were not he might write to me—to me, to whom it 's a misery to have to answer even an invitation to dinner! To begin with, I don't know how to spell. If Captain Lovelock ever boasts that he has had letters from me, you may know it 's an invention. He has never had anything but telegrams—three telegrams—that I sent him in America about a pair of slippers that he had left at our house and that I did n't know what to do with. Captain Lovelock's slippers are no trifle to have on one's hands—on one's feet, I suppose I ought to say. For telegrams the spelling does n't matter; the people at the office correct it—or if they don't you can put it off on them. I never see anything nowadays but Gordon's back,' she went on, as they took their places at table—'his noble broad back, as he sits writing his letters. That 's my principal view of my husband. I think that now we are in Paris I ought to have a portrait of it by one of the great artists. It would be such a characteristic pose. I have quite forgotten his face and I don't think I should know it.'
Gordon's face, however, presented itself just at this moment; he came in quickly, with his countenance flushed with the pleasure of meeting his old friend again. He had the sun-scorched look of a traveller who has just crossed the Atlantic, and he smiled at Bernard with his honest eyes.
'Don't think me a great brute for not being here to receive you,' he said, as he clasped his hand. 'I was writing an important letter and I put it to myself in this way: 'If I interrupt my letter I shall have to come back and finish it; whereas if I finish it now, I can have all the rest of the day to spend with him.' So I stuck to it to the end, and now we can be inseparable.'
'You may be sure Gordon reasoned it out,' said Blanche, while her husband offered his hand in silence to Captain Lovelock.
'Gordon's reasoning is as fine as other people's feeling!' declared Bernard, who was conscious of a desire to say something very pleasant to Gordon, and who did not at all approve of Blanche's little ironical tone about her husband.
'And Bernard's compliments are better than either,' said Gordon, laughing and taking his seat at table.
'I have been paying him compliments,' Blanche went on. 'I have been telling him he looks so brilliant, so blooming—as if something had happened to him, as if he had inherited a fortune. He must have been doing something very wicked, and he ought to tell us all about it, to amuse us. I am sure you are a dreadful Parisian, Mr. Longueville. Remember that we are three dull, virtuous people, exceedingly bored with each other's society, and wanting to hear something strange and exciting. If it 's a little improper, that won't spoil it.'
'You certainly are looking uncommonly well,' said Gordon, still smiling, across the table, at his friend. 'I see what Blanche means—'
'My dear Gordon, that 's a great event,' his wife interposed.
'It 's a good deal to pretend, certainly,' he went on, smiling always, with his red face and his blue eyes. 'But this is no great credit to me, because Bernard's superb condition would strike any one. You look as if you were going to marry the Lord Mayor's daughter!'
If Bernard was blooming, his bloom at this juncture must have deepened, and in so doing indeed have contributed an even brighter tint to his expression of salubrious happiness. It was one of the rare occasions of his life when he was at a loss for a verbal expedient.
'It 's a great match,' he nevertheless murmured, jestingly. 'You must excuse my inflated appearance.'
'It has absorbed you so much that you have had no time to write to me,' said Gordon. 'I expected to hear from you after you arrived.'
'I wrote to you a fortnight ago—just before receiving your own letter. You left New York before my letter reached it.'
'Ah, it will have crossed us,' said Gordon. 'But now that we have your society I don't care. Your letters, of course, are delightful, but that is still better.'
In spite of this sympathetic statement Bernard cannot be said to have enjoyed his lunch; he was thinking of something else that lay before him and that was not agreeable. He was like a man who has an acrobatic feat to perform—a wide ditch to leap, a high pole to climb—and who has a presentiment of fractures and bruises. Fortunately he was not obliged to talk much, as Mrs. Gordon displayed even more than her usual vivacity, rendering her companions the graceful service of lifting the burden of conversation from their shoulders.
'I suppose you were surprised to see us rushing out here so suddenly,' she observed in the course of the
