tim.
'Tell him I am not such a silly little chatterbox as I used to be at
Baden. I am a great deal wiser; I am almost as clever as Angela Vivian.'
She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian very clever--but it is not true
that she is equally so. I am very happy; come home and see."

Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States in
time for Gordon's wedding, which took place at midsummer. Bernard,
arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some
months' standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation,
whether he appeared happy. The first effect of the letter I have just
quoted had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series
of reflections which were quite the negative of surprise; and these
operations of Bernard's mind had finally merged themselves in a simple
sentiment of jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he
felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom
he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed
highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less
shaped to minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted
and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained
for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time.
Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose--the prettiest of little geese,
perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for
a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view
of human responsibilities. What a singular selection--what a queer
infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of
criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error
carried almost to the point of naivetae. He exclaimed that Blanche Evers
was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright's stamp always
ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much
better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to
solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This
was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid,
in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who
were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what
the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure
in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways,
and it plea