Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the .  
They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation. She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and undisturbed tête-a-tête with her husband, when he informed her that Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.
 
This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her husband’s college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a society man or “a man about town,” which were, perhaps, some of the reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an image of him in her mind. 390She pictured him tall, slim, ; with eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him. Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn’t very tall nor very cynical; neither did he wear eye-glasses nor carry his hands in his pockets. And she rather liked him when he first presented himself.
 
But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of those brilliant and traits which Gaston, her husband, had often assured her that he . On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home and in face of Gaston’s frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as toward her as the most woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even .
 
Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his cigar lazily and listening to Gaston’s experience as a sugar planter.
 
“This is what I call living,” he would utter 391with deep satisfaction, as the air that swept across the sugar field him with its warm and touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves against his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out and kill grosbecs when Gaston proposed doing so.
 
Gouvernail’s personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda, but she liked him. Indeed, he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow. After a few days, when she could understand him no better than at first, she gave over being puzzled and remained . In this mood she left her husband and her guest, for the most part, alone together. Then finding that Gouvernail took no manner of exception to her action, she imposed her society upon him, accompanying him in his idle strolls to the mill and walks along the batture. She sought to the reserve in which he had unconsciously himself.
 
“When is he going—your friend?” she one day asked her husband. “For my part, he tires me frightfully.”
 
392“Not for a week yet, dear. I can’t understand; he gives you no trouble.”
 
“No. I should like him better if he did; if he were more like others, and I had to plan somewhat for his comfort and .”
 
Gaston took his wife’s pretty face between his hands and looked tenderly and laughingly into her troubled eyes. They were making a bit of toilet sociably together in Mrs. Baroda’s dressing-room.
 
“You are full of surprises, ma belle,” he said to her. “Even I can never count upon how you are going to act under given conditions.” He kissed her and turned to fasten his before the mirror.
 
“Here you are,” he went on, “taking poor Gouvernail seriously and making a over him, the last thing he would desire or expect.”
 
“Commotion!” she hotly resented. “Nonsense! How can you say such a thing? Commotion, indeed! But, you know, you said he was clever.”
 
“So he is. But the poor fellow is run down by overwork now. That’s why I asked him here to take a rest.”
 
393“You used............