第44章

He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life.

He looked as if something had happened to him--as, in fact, something had. Bernard saw a latent spark in his friend's eye that seemed to question his own for an impression of Blanche--to question it eagerly, and yet to deprecate judgment.

He saw, too--with the fact made more vivid by Gordon's standing there beside her in his manly sincerity and throwing it into contrast--that Blanche was the same little posturing coquette of a Blanche whom, at Baden, he would have treated it as a broad joke that Gordon Wright should dream of marrying.

He saw, in a word, that it was what it had first struck him as being--an incongruous union. All this was a good deal for Bernard to see in the course of half a minute, especially through the rather opaque medium of a feeling of irreflective joy; and his impressions at this moment have a value only in so far as they were destined to be confirmed by larger opportunity.

"You have come a little sooner than we expected," said Gordon;

"but you are all the more welcome."

"It was rather a risk," Blanche observed. "One should be notified, when one wishes to make a good impression."

"Ah, my dear lady," said Bernard, "you made your impression--as far as I am concerned--a long time ago, and I doubt whether it would have gained anything to-day by your having prepared an effect."

They were standing before the fire-place, on the great hearth-rug, and Blanche, while she listened to this speech, was feeling, with uplifted arm, for a curl that had strayed from her chignon.

"She prepares her effects very quickly," said Gordon, laughing gently.

"They follow each other very fast!"

Blanche kept her hand behind her head, which was bent slightly forward; her bare arm emerged from her hanging sleeve, and, with her eyes glancing upward from under her lowered brows, she smiled at her two spectators.

Her husband laid his hand on Bernard's arm.

"Is n't she pretty?" he cried; and he spoke with a sort of tender delight in being sure at least of this point.

"Tremendously pretty!" said Bernard. "I told her so half an hour before you came in."

"Ah, it was time I should arrive!" Gordon exclaimed.

Blanche was manifestly not in the least discomposed by this frank discussion of her charms, for the air of distinguished esteem adopted by both of her companions diminished the crudity of their remarks. But she gave a little pout of irritated modesty--it was more becoming than anything she had done yet--and declared that if they wished to talk her over, they were very welcome; but she should prefer their waiting till she got out of the room.

So she left them, reminding Bernard that he was to send for his luggage and remain, and promising to give immediate orders for the preparation of his apartment. Bernard opened the door for her to pass out; she gave him a charming nod as he stood there, and he turned back to Gordon with the reflection of her smile in his face.

Gordon was watching him; Gordon was dying to know what he thought of her. It was a curious mania of Gordon's, this wanting to know what one thought of the women he loved; but Bernard just now felt abundantly able to humor it. He was so pleased at seeing him tightly married.

"She 's a delightful creature," Bernard said, with cordial vagueness, shaking hands with his friend again.

Gordon glanced at him a moment, and then, coloring a little, looked straight out of the window; whereupon Bernard remembered that these were just the terms in which, at Baden, after his companion's absence, he had attempted to qualify Angela Vivian.

Gordon was conscious--he was conscious of the oddity of his situation.

"Of course it surprised you," he said, in a moment, still looking out of the window.

"What, my dear fellow?"

"My marriage."

"Well, you know," said Bernard, "everything surprises me.

I am of a very conjectural habit of mind. All sorts of ideas come into my head, and yet when the simplest things happen I am always rather startled. I live in a reverie, and I am perpetually waked up by people doing things."

Gordon transferred his eyes from the window to Bernard's face--to his whole person.

"You are waked up? But you fall asleep again!"

"I fall asleep very easily," said Bernard.

Gordon looked at him from head to foot, smiling and shaking his head.

"You are not changed," he said. "You have travelled in unknown lands; you have had, I suppose, all sorts of adventures; but you are the same man I used to know."

"I am sorry for that!"

"You have the same way of representing--of misrepresenting, yourself."

"Well, if I am not changed," said Bernard, "I can ill afford to lose so valuable an art."

"Taking you altogether, I am glad you are the same," Gordon answered, simply;

"but you must come into my part of the house."