"Ah, Mrs. Vivian shows her wisdom!" said Bernard.

"He is certainly very handsome," murmured Blanche Evers, glancing
several times, with a very pretty aggressiveness, at Captain Lovelock.
"I must say I like Mr. Gordon Wright. Why in the world did you come here
without him?" she went on, addressing herself to Bernard. "You two are
so awfully inseparable. I don't think I ever saw you alone before."

"Oh, I have often seen Mr. Gordon Wright alone," said Captain
Lovelock--"that is, alone with Miss Vivian. That 's what the old lady
likes; she can't have too much of that."

The young girl, poised for an instant in one of her pretty attitudes,
looked at him from head to foot.

"Well, I call that scandalous! Do you mean that she wants to make a
match?"

"I mean that the young man has six thousand a year."

"It 's no matter what he has--six thousand a year is n't much! And we
don't do things in that way in our country. We have n't those horrid
match-making arrangements that you have in your dreadful country.
American mothers are not like English mothers."

"Oh, any one can see, of course," said Captain Lovelock, "that Mr.
Gordon Wright is dying of love for Miss Vivian."

"I can't see it!" cried Blanche.