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
a