, when a man finds himself united to a garrulous wife, he
naturally learns to hold his tongue; but sometimes, at the close of one
of Blanche's discursive monologues, on glancing at her husband just to
see how he took it, and seeing him sit perfectly silent, with a fixed,
inexpressive smile, Bernard said to himself that Gordon found the lesson
of listening attended with some embarrassments. Gordon, as the years
went by, was growing a little inscrutable; but this, too, in certain
circumstances, was a usual tendency. The operations of the mind, with
deepening experience, became more complex, and people were less apt to
emit immature reflections at forty than they had been in their earlier
days. Bernard felt a great kindness in these days for his old friend; he
never yet had seemed to him such a good fellow, nor appealed so strongly
to the benevolence of his disposition. Sometimes, of old, Gordon used to
irritate him; but this danger appeared completely to have passed away.
Bernard prolonged his visit; it gave him pleasure to be able to testify
in this manner to his good will. Gordon was the kindest of hosts, and
if in conversation, when his wife was present, he gave precedence to
her superior powers, he had at other times a good deal of pleasant
bachelor-talk with his guest. He seemed very happy; he had plenty of
occupation and plenty of practical intentions. The season went on, and
Bernard enjoyed his life. He enjoyed the keen and brilliant American
winter, and he found it very pleasant to be treated as a distinguished
stranger in his own land--a situation to which his long and repeated
absences had relegated him. The hospitality of New York was profuse;
the charm of its daughters extreme; the radiance of its skies superb.
Bernard was the restless and professionless mortal that we know,
wandering in life from one vague experiment to another, constantly
gratified and never satisfied, to whom no imperious finality had as yet
presented itself; and, nevertheless, for a time he contrived to limit
his horizon to the passing hour, and to make a good many hours pass in
the drawing-room of a demonstrative flirt.

For Mrs. Gordon was a flirt; that had become tolerably obvious. Bernard
had known of old that Blanche Evers was one, and two or three months'
observation of his friend's wife assured him that she did not judge
a certain ethereal coquetry to be inconsistent with the conjugal
character. Blanche flirted, in fact, more or less