He enjoyed the keen and brilliant American winter, and he found it very pleasant to be treated as a distinguished stranger in his own land--a situation to which his long and repeated absences had relegated him.

The hospitality of New York was profuse; the charm of its daughters extreme; the radiance of its skies superb.
Bernard was the restless and professionless mortal that we know, wandering in life from one vague experiment to another, constantly gratified and never satisfied, to whom no imperious finality had as yet presented itself; and, nevertheless, for a time he contrived to limit his horizon to the passing hour, and to make a good many hours pass in the drawing-room of a demonstrative flirt.
For Mrs.Gordon was a flirt; that had become tolerably obvious.

Bernard had known of old that Blanche Evers was one, and two or three months' observation of his friend's wife assured him that she did not judge a certain ethereal coquetry to be inconsistent with the conjugal character.

Blanche flirted, in fact, more or less with all men, but her opportunity for playing her harmless batteries upon Bernard were of course exceptionally large.

The poor fellow was perpetually under fire, and it was inevitable that he should reply with some precision of aim.
It seemed to him all child's play, and it is certain that when his back was turned to his pretty hostess he never found himself thinking of her.