bout 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 should