oud, frank exclamation of pleasure, grasped his friend by both hands.
It was so long since he had seen Bernard that he seemed a good deal
moved; he stood there smiling, clasping his hands, looking him in
the eyes, unable for some moments to speak. Bernard, on his side, was
greatly pleased; it was delightful to him to look into Gordon's honest
face again and to return his manly grasp. And he looked well--he looked
happy; to see that was more delightful yet. During these few instants,
while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard's
elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of
his own pleasure. 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;
h