“Ah, are you here?” cried Blanche with another little cry of surprise. “I did n’t notice you--I thought you were the waiter. This is what he calls running about after me,” she added, to Bernard; “coming to breakfast without being asked. How queerly they have arranged the table!” she went on, gazing with her little elevated eyebrows at this piece of furniture. “I always thought that in Paris, if they could n’t do anything else, they could arrange a table. I don’t like that at all--those horrid little dishes on each side! Don’t you think those things ought to be off the table, Mr. Longueville? I don’t like to see a lot of things I ‘m not eating. And I told them to have some flowers--pray, where are the flowers? Do they call those things flowers? They look as if they had come out of the landlady’s bonnet! Mr. Longueville, do look at those objects.” “They are not like me--they are not very fresh,” laughed Bernard. “It ‘s no great matter--we have not got to eat them,” growled Captain Lovelock. “I should think you would expect to--with the luncheon you usually make!” rejoined Blanche. “Since you are here, though I did n’t ask you, you might as well make yourself useful. Will you be so 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.