think of it
only as a part of her personal picturesqueness. The thing was a regular
performance; the practice of unlimited chatter had made her perfect. She
rested upon her audience and held it together, and the sight of half
a dozen pairs of amused and fascinated faces led her from one piece of
folly to another. On this occasion, her audience was far from failing
her, for they were all greatly interested. Captain Lovelock's interest,
as we know, was chronic, and our three other friends were much occupied
with a matter with which Blanche was intimately connected. Bernard,
as he listened to her, smiling mechanically, was not encouraged. He
remembered what Mrs. Vivian had said shortly before she came in, and it
was not pleasant to him to think that Gordon had been occupied half
the day in contrasting the finest girl in the world with this magnified
butterfly. The contrast was sufficiently striking as Angela sat there
near her, very still, bending her handsome head a little, with her hands
crossed in her lap, and on her lips a kind but inscrutable smile. Mrs.
Vivian was on the sofa next to Blanche, one of whose hands, when it was
not otherwise occupied, she occasionally took into her own.

"Dear little Blanche!" she softly murmured, at intervals.

These few remarks represent a longer pause than Mrs. Gordon often
suffered to occur. She continued to deliver herself upon a hundred
topics, and it hardly matters where we take her up.

"I have n't the least idea what we are going to do. I have nothing to
say about it whatever. Gordon tells me every day I must decide, and
then I ask Captain Lovelock what he thinks; because, you see, he always
thinks a great deal. Captain Lovelock says he does n't care a fig--that
he will go wherever I go. So you see that does n't carry us very far.
I want to settle on some place where Captain Lovelock won't go, but he
won't help me at all. I think it will look better for him not to follow
us; don't you think it will look better, Mrs. Vivian? Not that I care in
the least where we go--or whether Captain Lovelock follows us, either.
I don't take any interest in anything, Mrs. Vivian; don't you think that
is very sad? Gordon may go anywhere he likes--to St. Petersburg, or to
Bombay."

"You might go to a worse place than Bombay," said Captain Lovelock,
speaking with the authority of an Anglo-Indian rich in reminiscences.

Blanche gave him a little stare.

"Ah well, that 's knocked on the head! F