THE REVERBERATOR

By Henry James

I

"I guess my daughter's in here, " the old man said leading the way intothe little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, butthat is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked olderthan he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of thehotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up tohim with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. PoorMr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to waiton the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his wayacross the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. Helooked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrustinghis head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line tonotice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman's good officesas he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of anattention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons wouldhave assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought itnatural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by thedegree to which the young man thought it natural her father should taketrouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorwayof the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while GeorgeFlack stepped in after him. 

The reading-room of the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham was nonetoo ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consistprincipally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it waseasy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplacewith a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great dealof curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, andthe New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was justnow in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with herback to the window, looking straight before her into the conventionalroom. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon thearms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lyingin her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Herface was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; neverthelessthe young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. "Why, itain't Miss Francie--it's Miss Delia!"

"Well, I guess we can fix that, " said Mr. Dosson, wandering furtherinto the room and drawing his feet over the floor without liftingthem. Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanenttransitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when hesat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. Ashe glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvethe raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. "Delia dear, where'syour little sister?"

Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as couldbe perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: "Why, Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?"

"Well, this is a good place to meet, " her father remarked, as if mildly, and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations. 

"Any place is good where one meets old friends, " said George Flack, looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the Americansheet and then put it down. "Well, how do you like Paris?" hesubsequently went on to the young lady. 

"We quite enjoy it; but of course we're familiar now. "

"Well, I was in hopes I could show you something, " Mr. Flack said. 

"I guess they've seen most everything, " Mr. Dosson observed. 

"Well, we've seen more than you!" exclaimed his daughter. 

"Well, I've seen a good deal--just sitting there. "

A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendencyto "setting"; but he would pronounce the same word in a different mannerat different times. 

"Well, in Paris you can see everything, " said the young man. "I'm quiteenthusiastic about Paris. "

"Haven't you been here before?" Miss Delia asked. 

"Oh yes, but it's ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?"

"She's all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we'regoing out again. "

"It's very attractive for the young, " Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor. 

"Well then, I'm one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?" Mr. Flack continued to the girl. 

"It'll seem like old times, on the deck, " she replied. "We're going tothe Bon Marche. "

"Why don't you go to the Louvre? That's the place for YOU. "

"We've just come from there: we've had quite a morning. "

"Well, it's a good place, " the visitor a trifle dryly opined. 

"It's good for some things but it doesn't come up to my idea forothers. "

"Oh they've seen everything, " said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: "I guessI'll go and call Francie. "

"Well, tell her to hurry, " Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in eachhand. 

"She knows my pace, " Mr. Flack remarked. 

"I should think she would, the way you raced!" the girl returned withmemories of the Umbria. "I hope you don't expect to rush round Paristhat way. "

"I always rush. I live in a rush. That's the way to get through. "

"Well, I AM through, I guess, " said Mr. Dosson philosophically. 

"Well, I ain't!" his daughter declared with decision. 

"Well, you must come round often, " he continued to their friend as aleave-taking. 

"Oh, I'll come round! I'll have to rush, but I'll do it. "

"I'll send down Francie. " And Francie's father crept away. 

"And please give her some more money!" her sister called after him. 

"Does she keep the money?" George Flack enquired. 

"KEEP it?" Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. "Oh youinnocent young man!"

"I guess it's the first time you were ever called innocent!" criedDelia, left alone with the visitor. 

"Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris. "

"Well, I can't see that it has hurt US. We ain't a speck extravagant. "

"Wouldn't you have a right to be?"

"I don't think any one has a right to be, " Miss Dosson returnedincorruptibly. 

The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment. 

"That's the way you used to talk. "

"Well, I haven't changed. "

"And Miss Francie--has she?"

"Well, you'll see, " said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves. 

Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the armsof his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively:"Bon Marche?"

"No, I got them in a little place I know. "

"Well, they're Paris anyway. "

"Of course they're Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere. "

"You must show me the little place anyhow, " Mr. Flack continuedsociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: "Theold gentleman seems all there. "

"Oh he's the dearest of the dear. "

"He's a real gentleman--of the old stamp, " said George Flack. 

"Well, what should you think our father would be?"

"I should think he'd be delighted!"

"Well, he is, when we carry out our plans. "

"And what are they--your plans?" asked the young man. 

"Oh I never tell them. "

"How then does he know whether you carry them out?"

"Well, I guess he'd know it if we didn't, " said the girl. 

"I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything toyourself. "

"Well, I know what I want, " the young lady pursued. 

He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin releasedfrom some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment'ssilence, after which they looked up at each other. "I've an idea youdon't want me, " said George Flack. 

"Oh yes, I do--as a friend. "

"Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that's the meanest!"he rang out. 

"Where's the meanness when I suppose you're not so ridiculous as to wishto be anything more!"

"More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?"

"My sister IS myself--I haven't got any other, " said Delia Dosson. 

"Any other sister?"

"Don't be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?" the girl wenton. 

"Well, I forget which one I WAS in. "

"Why, something to do with that newspaper--don't you remember?"

"Yes, but it isn't that paper any more--it's a different one. "

"Do you go round for news--in the same way?"

"Well, I try to get the people what they want. It's hard work, " said theyoung man. 

"Well, I suppose if you didn't some one else would. They will have it, won't they?"

"Yes, they will have it. " The wants of the people, however, appeared atthe present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked athis watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn't seem to have muchauthority. 

"What do you mean by that?" the girl asked. 

"Why with Miss Francie. She's taking her time, or rather, I mean, she'staking mine. "

"Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty ofthat, " Delia returned. 

"All right: I'll give her all I have. " And Miss Dosson's interlocutorleaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, ifit came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she satthere easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was thefirst indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few momentshe asked the young lady if she didn't suppose her father had told hersister who it was. 

"Do you think that's all that's required?" she made answer with coldgaiety. But she added more familiarly: "Probably that's the reason. She's so shy. "

"Oh yes--she used to look it. "

"No, that's her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet sufferseverything. "

"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia, " the young man venturedto declare. "You don't suffer much. "

"No, for Francie I'm all there. I guess I could act for her. "

He had a pause. "You act for her too much. If it wasn't for you I thinkI could do something. "

"Well, you've got to kill me first!" Delia Dosson replied. 

"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on. 

But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want. "

"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs. "

"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I, " said the girl. "But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours. "

"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried GeorgeFlack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the youngjournalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be presentfor the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention togive to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps atthere being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on theother--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects onthe part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidlypassive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-fiveyears old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light andcolourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appearshorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. Toa casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquittedthemselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed howlittle Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivancesof Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself, in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, markedfor recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprigon a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, withits settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was ascalm as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, the meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishingbusinesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the headof one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likelyto become a Doctor or a Judge. 

An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintancewith Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing theAtlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in someslight association immediately after disembarking, but that each partyhad come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however withoutmeeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dossonhad led her father and sister back to their native land and had then asecond time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that itwasn't, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiatethe accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have beenembarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in asuburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had beencapable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much:what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a Europeanstay of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particularfuture opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meetwith George Flack's approval--he also had a big undertaking on that sideand it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have hisfriends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place likethat--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in oneof those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him. 

"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have totake us, " Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask whichthat way was and to guess he had never known but one way to takeanything--which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'llmake of it, " the girl returned; and she would give for the present nofurther explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite ifit however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announcedundertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in thepersonage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we havesmuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson's attentionwas founded on a conception of Mr. Flack's intrinsic brilliancy. Wouldhis own impression have justified that?--would he have found such aconception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the thought, for that wouldsaddle me with the care of showing what right our officious observermight have had to his particular standard. Let us therefore simplynote that George Flack had grounds for looming publicly large toan uninformed young woman. He was connected, as she supposed, withliterature, and wasn't a sympathy with literature one of the manyengaging attributes of her so generally attractive little sister? IfMr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn't a trail of forgottenTauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? Theelder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, butusually found that she had brought odd volumes. She consideredhowever that as a family they had an intellectual link with the youngjournalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the advantageof his acquaintance questioned. 

Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as aprejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever theymight be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general noability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't convenientlyhave prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him thatyou knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mindyou must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not evenaversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group:aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confoundedhim. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample oradvertisement, the air of representing a "line of goods" for which thereis a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to beindividually designated: a number, like that of the day's newspaper, would have served all his, or at least all your purpose, and you wouldhave vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. Asevery copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson's visitorwould have been quite adequately marked as "young commercial American. "Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of itssometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He wastwenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light greyovercoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which mighthave availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenienceof society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a greenhat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material inEurope for an American "society-paper. "

If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came inshe addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that shehad been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicatedby the manner of her response. "Well, the way you DO turn up, " she said, smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or thehollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she hadmade him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she asevidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearancehad not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptiblebut indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of hishaving asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her tothe exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasurewhich might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator lookingfrom Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at aloss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girlwas exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceablelikeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a stilland scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is calledanimation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airylightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quickmovement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressiblelife--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the mostusual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have beensaid without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would haveimproved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softnesswould have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirmthe implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with anewspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; herneck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of herdark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line inher face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice andinconceivabilities of ignorance. 

Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this younglady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down allthe things. "Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we've got so many, "Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. "There were a fewdozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn't find; but I guess I've gotmost of them and most of the gloves. "

"Well, what are you carting them about for?" George Flack enquired, taking the parcel from her. "You had better let me handle them. Do youbuy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?"

"Well, it only makes fifty apiece, " Francie yieldingly smiled. "Theyain't really nice--we're going to change them. "

"Oh I won't be mixed up with that--you can't work that game on theseFrenchmen!" the young man stated. 

"Oh with Francie they'll take anything back, " Delia Dosson declared. "They just love her, all over. "

"Well, they're like me then, " said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. "I'LLtake her back if she'll come. "

"Well, I don't think I'm ready quite yet, " the girl replied. "But I hopevery much we shall cross with you again. "

"Talk about crossing--it's on these boulevards we want alife-preserver!" Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of thehotel and the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. There were many vehicles. 

"Won't this thing do? I'll tie it to either of you, " George Flack said, holding out his bundle. "I suppose they won't kill you if they loveyou, " he went on to the object of his preference. 

"Well, you've got to know me first, " she answered, laughing and lookingfor a chance, while they waited to pass over. 

"I didn't know you when I was struck. " He applied his disengaged hand toher elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice ofhis observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether theirfather had given her that money. She replied that he had given herloads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack tosay that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father. 

"Why you don't mean to say you want to be our brother!" Francie prattledas they went down the Rue de la Paix. 

"I should like to be Miss Delia's, if you can make that out, " helaughed. 

"Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab, " MissDelia returned. "I presume you and Francie don't take this for apromenade-deck. "

"Don't she feel rich?" George Flack demanded of Francie. "But we dorequire a cart for our goods"; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while atthe Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down intothe court again and took his place in his customary chair. 

II

The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry ofwomen selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with therich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of theflowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent andParisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there weremany things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; pilesof luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa. , or St. LouisMo. ; rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with blackoil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons stayingand arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together withvague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degreecontributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereftand exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air ofruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you wouldhave guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for atruce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up fromtime to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at thestreet. 

He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, andthen came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little andhad no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn't assuage. Helooked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the youngwomen from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything butthe other American parents. Something in his breast told him that heknew all about these. It's not upon each other that the animals in thesame cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There wasa silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain thathelped to account for his daughter Francie's various delicacies. He wasfair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a momentthat the question of how he should hold himself had never in his lifeoccurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held himrather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end of which heseemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thinlight whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to hischeeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose ofcomedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinkingover, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that hadjust occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just asit hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and hisclothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work ofa French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that itis in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd inBond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing. 

Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplestcomposition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He hada native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct asa beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid ofparticular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a largefortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happyspeculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as hesat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung hissong or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simplybecause he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tunein the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far upthe wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was anunassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought muchmore and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares andrailway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property. He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his presentself with what he would have been without them. His view of them wasperfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life andFrancie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson hadnot perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's beauty: hewould scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of avaluable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to theeyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in laterdays, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving booksbehind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn'tunderstand it?

The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the onlydirecting determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he wasunder the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it tohave happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have beenthe tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there werelulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simplyfloated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be oneof them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon againinhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters wereout for any time the occasion affected him as a "weather-breeder"--thewind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but theirnow being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened thetemporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dossonnever doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He representedthe newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptionsrepresented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia andFrancie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to seethem dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson hadslightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasantsurprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenientdistance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscencesof Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotelat Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, buthe would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strongconvictions: one of which was that the children should never go out witha gentleman they hadn't seen before. The sense of their having, and hishaving, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mereplacidity of his personally foregoing the young man's society in favourof Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied thatthe streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just thesafest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpfulgentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the factof his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspapertold you everything there was in the world every morning, that waswhat a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had neversupposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack'sand that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happychances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls mighthave seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They werehis company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to himmore than he to them. 

They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected thatMr. Flack's very profession would somehow make everything turn out totheir profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing themback, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might havebeen taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landladysmiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even venturedto remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely dayindoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he wasconfronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, whichaffected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends oftheirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree ofwaste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when helounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. Itwanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was notbeyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, stillaccompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance fromeach other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to hispossible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they hadseen and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy ofenquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a goodtime: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from theconsciousness of failure. "Won't you just step in and take dinner withus?" he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everythingappeared to minister. 

"Well, that's a handsome offer, " George Flack replied while Delia put iton record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. 

"Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind yourcakes. It's twenty minutes past six, and the table d'hote's on time. "

"You don't mean to say you dine at the table d'hote!" Mr. Flack cried. 

"Why, don't you like that?"--and Francie's candour of appeal to theircomrade's taste was celestial. 

"Well, it isn't what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too manyflowerpots and chickens' legs. "

"Well, would you like one of these restaurants?" asked Mr. Dosson. "_I_don't care--if you show us a good one. "

"Oh I'll show you a good one--don't you worry. " Mr. Flack's tone wasever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. 

"Well, you've got to order the dinner then, " said Francie. 

"Well, you'll see how I could do it!" He towered over her in the prideof this feat. 

"He has got an interest in some place, " Delia declared. "He has taken usto ever so many stores where he gets his commission. "

"Well, I'd pay you to take them round, " said Mr. Dosson; and with muchagreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sallyforth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack's guidance. 

If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a moreoriginal proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, atthe hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course ofthe following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainlymade clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man whohad so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, forissues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and thepress so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the rightpath, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel howmuch they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that theydidn't know anything about anything, even about such a matter asordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselvesrather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfullyvarious, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He hadappointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day, and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l'Univers et deCheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly inreading the lists of Americans who "registered" at the bankers' and atGalignani's. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnlyover these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them andfound what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waitingwhile she satisfied herself that Mr. And Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and MissCora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had "left for Brussels. "

Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what hewanted--which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--andDelia was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a littlesharp. He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in ahumorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging overthe registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little partynot sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in newstuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance toobserve how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations thatnever came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after theyhad gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to befound through their not having registered, or wondering whether theyshould overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making uptheir minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, through some accident, that the hunted game had "left for" Biarritz evenas the Rosenheims for Brussels. "We know plenty of people if we couldonly come across them, " Delia had more than once observed: shescanned the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of theunsatisfactory way in which friends at home would "write out" that otherfriends were "somewhere in Europe. " She expressed the wish that suchcorrespondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague. Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out andhad left cards for them without an address and superscribed with somemocking dash of the pencil--"So sorry to miss you!" or "Off to-morrow!"The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them overfor a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards, brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flackgenerally knew where they were, the people who were "somewhere inEurope. " Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by thevoices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he heldhis peace on purpose; he didn't want any outsiders; he thought theirlittle party just right. Mr. Dosson's place in the scheme of Providencewas to "go" with Delia while he himself "went" with Francie, and nothingwould have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The youngman was professionally so occupied with other people's affairs that itshould doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed tohave affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was FrancieDosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what hadbecome of Mr. And Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. Hecounted all the things she didn't care about--her soft inadvertent eyeshelped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so fewinterests there was the greater possibility that a young man of boldconceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually theair of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amusedresignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in herbrain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerablefatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursionsand from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevardsand avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacencyhowever, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an ideathat he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only couldcatch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He likedto make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficultwith people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of theboundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not ascruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, thelittle these good people knew of what they could do with their money. They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet wereincapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of socialhumility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added totheir loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strikeGeorge Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in theplaces where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turnto one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied ofwaiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to whichhe had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on thelevel expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees. 

He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, beingcareful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequentwith propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood oftheir hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As thelate spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out onthe "terrace, " amid the array of small tables at the door of theestablishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry themfrom afar at their post and in the very same postures to which hehad appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching themany-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of thefeatures in the panorama were base they were only so in a version thatthe social culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. GeorgeFlack considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson:wouldn't the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? andwasn't the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too thathe nattered and caressed Miss Francie's father, for there was no oneto whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, theprojects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in theold gentleman's mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr. Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, "Well, where haveyou got to now?"--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flackreported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia andFrancie gave attention only in case they knew something of the personson whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferredthis distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerantinterposition of "Is that so?" and "Well, that's good, " just assubmissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the firsttime. 

In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, andespecially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew whathe wanted and that it wasn't in the least what SHE wanted. She amplifiedthis statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. Flack's designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, asshe intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia's vision of thedanger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closelyconnected, as was natural, with the idea of an "engagement": this ideawas in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddestway to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engagedbut wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made upher mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet toher knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; ifher conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligiblyit would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theorythat a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia'sconception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent:it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all ofbeing, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues andsubject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred toher withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition ofexperiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. Shefelt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--hewould have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of loveas something in its nature essentially refined. All the same shediscriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired thatfor Francie it shouldn't lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked atsuch a union under the influence of that other view which she kept asyet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasionshould come up; giving her sister to understand that she would neverspeak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Whichwas where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence. 

"To suppose what?" Francie would ask as if she were totallyunacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions ofyoung men. 

"Well, you'll see--when he begins to say things you won't like!" Thissounded ominous on Delia's part, yet her anxiety was really but thin:otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flackof perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--thoughit struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of theirlife--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed toher father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was"after"; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of itas a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed wasnot of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would neverreally do anything--that is would never really like anything--hernearest relatives didn't like. Her sister's docility was a great comfortto Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, wasthe first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things muchmore than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenienceof her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia'sreasons--for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of anyparticular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father asthe controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terribletreasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertaketo administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even herfather, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to makeany change. She couldn't have accepted any gentleman as a party to anengagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--withoutreference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hairwithout a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elderdaughter's admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flackwould have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, in his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, somehumorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of truedomestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery onFrancie's conquest? Mr. Flack's attributive intentions became a theme ofindulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyedby the freedom of all this tribute. "Well, he HAS told us about halfwe know, " she used to reply with an air of the judicious that theundetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have foundindescribably quaint. 

Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floatedthe fact that this was the very best time in the young lady's life tohave her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have itdone well; also that he knew a "lovely artist, " a young American ofextraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. Heled his trio to this gentleman's studio, where they saw severalpictures that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francieprotested that she didn't want to be done in THAT style, and Deliadeclared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magiclantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, sothat they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shownthem by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets andconfections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr. Waterlow's productions took their place for the most part in thecategory of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friendsretired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. GeorgeFlack told them however that they couldn't get out of it, inasmuch ashe had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit. They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she wouldhave to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from anewspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idioticto miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap;for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of thefuture, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a newsystem altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn't wantto go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them anarticle that would fetch five times the money in about five years--whichsomehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would haveseemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason theythought would be characteristic of informed people; and he evenconvinced them after a little that when once they had got used toimpressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlowwas the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him, because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancingwith strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure somethingbefore the rush. 

III

The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers;and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He wassmoking cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the twogentlemen--it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered withscrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as ifthe artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as verypleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the younglady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like andwho had already come too often to his studio to pick up "glimpses" (thepainter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charmingcandidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow asa precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the sameimpression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyesoff her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinishedcanvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutesthe favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francielearned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr. Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of hismoustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but hepronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--asif it had been French. 

After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father onthis occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling backon their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it toeach other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charmof line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare propertiesthrough the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered fromtheir conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with theaid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowedwith plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highestorder, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--ithad been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hourof leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still ratherdistant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitterson his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before goingto Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a littleexcursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeksof the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the longdays and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, forthough he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--theyhad after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl inhand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. Thisamendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and theartist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women hadquitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality thatthey should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This wassimply that they should come back in the autumn, when he should becomparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all taketheir time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--thequestion of the pretty one's leaving Paris for the summer would besure to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty oneclearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanteda reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlowremarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--hiseye would take possession of her. 

His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It wasperhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l'Univers etde Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding wouldnot, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantableliberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in Americaand was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knewthat in Paris young men didn't call at hotels on blameless maids, buthe also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn't visityoung men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--nonesave the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most partcommunicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, whowas after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French, school, jeered at the other's want of native instinct, at the way henever knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert wasobliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that inthe great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--hecouldn't tell which was which. He would have had a country andcountrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matterhad never been properly settled for him, and it's one there's ever agreat difficulty in a gentleman's settling for himself. Born in Paris, he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family thatFrench society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinianand a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His threesisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany whilethe others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother hadfallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, extorted from him the promise that he wouldn't take service in itsarmies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough onthe altar of sympathy. 

The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place:he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than hewas; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that whathe might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop himin the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure thatthe only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, andhe had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His familyhowever had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of eachmember of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, hissisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regardthis scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was afamily in which there was no individual but only a collective property. Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especiallyby going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection byMonsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himselfin touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour sohigh as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search offreshness, but he needn't have gone far: he would have had but to turnhis lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it. Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, livedas much as possible in that more select world where it is a positiveduty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he espousedthe talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive andconscientious about them as he might have been about himself. Hedefended certain of Waterlow's purples and greens as he would havedefended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fullyacclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions thatbelonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, forhimself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it downparticularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were, Waterlow's purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If hehadn't failed there other failures wouldn't have mattered, not eventhat of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend'sagreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so muchand whose companions he didn't like, that he felt supremely without avocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organisedfor catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow's sense of that sourceof charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses weresometimes too crude. 

He avenged himself for the artist's profanation of his first attemptto approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week ina second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would havereturned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded bythe sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with herfather and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the youngman might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net ofsuch narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The littleparty was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they hadcollected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, onthe first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, withsofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeurand the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, witha half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. After young Probert's first call his name was often on the lips of thesimple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of asecret of his perception that Francie hit the bull's-eye "every time. "Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matterof course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not goneafter the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he enteredthe hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motivebecame startlingly vivid. 

Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; shesaid there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused uponthese mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealedfor assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated andreturned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course thatas soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into hispaper. Mr. Flack promised to "nose round"; he said the best plan wouldbe that the results should "come back" to her in the Reverberator; itmight have been gathered from him that "the people over there"--in otherwords the mass of their compatriots--wouldn't be unpersuadable that theywanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove nonethe less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able togive him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance hadspent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn't scare up asingle person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and downand all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of theAmerican colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia'simagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormentingroundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to "get" Francie, as shesaid to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed themembers of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; andshe used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan andthe wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are alwayschanging their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to thewindows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of theenviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady witha pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour thistheory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was alreadymade to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, this question of getting Francie in. 

When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert's net couldn't be either therose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any generalshake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash ofinspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn't measure atthe time. She asked if that didn't perhaps prove on the contrary quitethe opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. Wasn't there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn't they besomewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered atthis weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot thatDelia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there. 

"Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so faryou can't find where they went in?"--that was the phrase in which herecognised the truth of the girl's grope. Delia's fixed eyes assented, and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: "That's thekind of family we want to handle!"

"Well, perhaps they won't want to be handled, " Delia had returned witha still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. "You had betterfind out, " she had added. 

The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for hisarrival had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of therepresentative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way theytreated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dossonhad said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia hadremarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was sobig; and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. Mentioning that that wasn't the place where they usually received--sheliked to hear herself talk of "receiving"--she led the party up to herwhite-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: sheliked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silkchairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnutor a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of thedinner-hour, she sighed: "Well, I suppose you're so used to them--to thebest--living so long over here. " The allusion to the dinner-hour ledMr. Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with themwithout ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled itfor them--who was coming to take them round. 

"And then we're going to the circus, " Francie said, speaking for thefirst time. 

If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to thepurpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered inthe young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that theeducation of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened himmuch--rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions ofthis order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentivestudy of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curiousresearch and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of which was a conscious enjoyment and the supremegratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as manyindelible memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don'tknow whether it's a confession of a very poor life, but the mostimportant things that have happened to me in this world have been simplyhalf a dozen visual impressions--things that happened through my eyes. "

"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer tothis, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continuedto be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in hisbrain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experienceof the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, somuch saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip throughone's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gaveit and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment howstraight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, hefelt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one ofthose "important" facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. Itwas in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value ofhis Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense. 

It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that inducedhim to accept Mr. Dosson's invitation; nor was it even the charm exertedby the girl's appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to himfor herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ringher type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew itwas rare she herself didn't. He liked to be intensely conscious, butliked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he hadtold Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recoverthe national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to thewest. He had led his sister, Mme. De Brecourt, to expect that he woulddine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could seethe people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshmentand freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to hissister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. D'Outreville and M. De Grospre, oldM. Courageau, Mme. De Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge;but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what hepreferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfullywanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring itin. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson hadproposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn'tfavour this suggestion; he said "We want a double good dinner to-day andMr. Flack has got to order it. " Upon this Delia had asked the visitorif HE couldn't order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, before he could answer the question, "Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That'sjust the point, ain't it?" Gaston Probert replied that he had no wishbut to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if heknew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almostnone, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such acharming start. 

"Oh we ain't anything--if you mean that, " Delia said. "If you go onyou'll go on beyond us. "

"We ain't anything here, my dear, but we're a good deal at home, " Mr. Dosson jocosely interjected. 

"I think we're very nice anywhere!" Francie exclaimed; upon which GastonProbert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was inthese amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was nonethe less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as ifhe had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. I hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took thecorrespondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making theyoung man "talk" for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something, usually so irresistible in George Flack's mind, suffered an odd check. He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense otherthan the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, butthough Mr. Flack didn't know that on a first occasion he would havethought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He saidto himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean classanyway, the people for whom their own country wasn't good enough. He didn't go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirableestablishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to ordera bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil thisgentleman's amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus inthe Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o'clock, the company wasconveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. Theoccasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that thesense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not neededto make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hatehis crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submissionto him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an importantobservation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to thenotice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed agreat desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would helpthem to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention thatwould contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contactwith the other members, especially with the female members, of hisfamily. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he requiredfor purposes of argument that Mr. Probert's family should have femalemembers, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. Hegrasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francieand Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it onFrancie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when hehad brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet theirpile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor youngman, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased itto herself--about Mme. De Brecourt and Mme. De Cliche: such, Miss Dossonlearned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who hadhouses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that oneof these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was lessexasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and itdidn't prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after theevening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. Italso as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party hadbeen proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished tomultiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson hadcharacteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with theyoung journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to payfor them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardlycontent on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and hecould be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always feltany arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't beenreferred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Deliahad made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain asguests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of thecompany: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. In factshe was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlowwould on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act ofcourtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such asubject. Delia's hint however was all-sufficient for her father; hewould have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part ina festival not graced by Mr. Flack's presence. His idea of loyalty wasthat he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there totake another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to getshaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while GeorgeFlack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion HenriQuatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the Europeanmanager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himselfwould. 

IV

Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus;she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chairafter ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companionsfarewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walkedoff in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively notseparated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at eachother and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after nightin their empty saloon. "Well, I want to know when you're going tostop, " Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were acontinuation, which it was not, of something they had lately beensaying. 

"Stop what?" asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron. 

"Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack. "

Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied inher small flat patient voice: "Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be sofoolish?"

"Father, I wish you'd speak to her. Francie, I ain't foolish, " Deliasubmitted. 

"What do you want me to say to her?" Mr. Dosson enquired. "I guess I'vesaid about all I know. "

"Well, that's in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest. "

"I guess there's no one in earnest but you, " Francie remarked. "Theseain't so good as the last. "

"NO, and there won't be if you don't look out. There's something youcan do if you'll just keep quiet. If you can't tell difference of style, well, I can!" Delia cried. 

"What's the difference of style?" asked Mr. Dosson. But before thisquestion could be answered Francie protested against the charge of"carrying-on. " Quiet? Wasn't she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Deliareplied that a girl wasn't quiet so long as she didn't keep others so;and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. "Why don't you take him and let Francie take the other?" Mr. Dossoncontinued. 

"That's just what I'm after--to make her take the other, " said his elderdaughter. 

"Take him--how do you mean?" Francie returned. 

"Oh you know how. "

"Yes, I guess you know how!" Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence ofprejudice that might have been deplored in a parent. 

"Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that's what _I_ want to know, "Delia pursued to her sister. "If you want to go bang home you're takingthe right way to do it. "

"What has that got to do with it?" Mr. Dosson audibly wondered. 

"Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--wherehis paper's published? That's where you'll have to pull up sooner orlater, " Delia declaimed. 

"Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?" Francie said withher small sweet weariness. 

"It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go righthome SOME time. "

"Well then you've got to go without Mr. Probert, " Delia made answer withdecision. "If you think he wants to live over there--"

"Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself, " Francieargued with passionless pauses. 

"Yes, and when he gets there he'll want to come back. I thought you wereso much interested in Paris. "

"My poor child, I AM interested!" smiled Francie. "Ain't I interested, father?"

"Well, I don't know how you could act differently to show it. "

"Well, I do then, " said Delia. "And if you don't make Mr. Flackunderstand _I_ will. "

"Oh I guess he understands--he's so bright, " Francie vaguely pleaded. 

"Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright, " said Mr. Dosson. "Good-night, chickens, " he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose. 

His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of theyounger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile whenDelia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of hersister's insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Deliawhipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would haveprevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hourwithout irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the whileit hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to beviolently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhilea bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there wassomething funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which couldonly involve a "fuss. " The real answer to anything, to everything hersister might say at these hours of urgency was: "Oh if you want to makeout that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought toremember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. Therefore if there's to be any comfort for either of us we had both muchbetter just go on as we are. " She didn't however on this occasion meether constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable forceseemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony forthe American girl was now shining in the east--in England and Franceand Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what didthey hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody nobetter than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evidenttruth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which shenever alluded save as "over here" that the American girl was now calledupon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the pointthat Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined thatshe didn't care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that sheherself didn't care, but that Delia ought to for consistency. 

"Well, he's a prince compared with Mr. Flack, " Delia declared. 

"He hasn't the same ability; not half. "

"He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort ofpeople I want you to know. "

"What good will they do me?" Francie asked. "They'll hate me. Beforethey could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--thatthey'd think monstrous. "

"Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?"

"Oh but he wouldn't then! He'd hate me too. "

"Then all you've got to do is not to do it, " Delia concluded. 

"Oh but I should--every time, " her sister went on. 

Delia looked at her a moment. "What ARE you talking about?"

"Yes, what am I? It's disgusting!" And Francie sprang up. 

"I'm sorry you have such thoughts, " said Delia sententiously. 

"It's disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and hissociety and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you. "

"It's disgusting if he isn't just dying; but it isn't if he is. "

"Well, I'll make him skip!" Francie went on with a sudden approach tosharpness. 

"Oh you're worse than father!" her sister cried, giving her a push asthey went to bed. 

They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour beforethe time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of thisbeing to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll onthe celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The eveningwas splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; thegrass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park andforest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung overthe curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms theterrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yetin their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted hereand there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers ofthe garrison. How it came, after Delia's warning in regard to hercarrying-on--especially as she hadn't failed to feel the weight of hersister's wisdom--Francie couldn't have told herself: certain it is thatbefore ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the eveningwouldn't pass without Mr. Flack's taking in some way, and for a certaintime, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind toappreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had endedby interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted agreat many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretchedaway before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--andhe was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for hisideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; theywere an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted toprotest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free boldspirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vaguesoft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, whohad not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked tobe let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leanedagainst the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back attheir companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they stillstood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couplewho had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another somesuch appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the oddspectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidentlyunder Delia's direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francieguessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definitesignal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia countedon her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just asDelia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure ofherself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless boredevasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said inturning away was--"Yes, I'm watching you, and I depend on you to finishhim up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I'll allow you half anhour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It's very kind of meto give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able totell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!"

Francie didn't in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am inpresenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracioushistorian to admit that she believed him as "bright" as her father hadoriginally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely tomeet. She had no other measure for distinction in young men but theirbrightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability orpower that this term didn't seem to cover. In many a girl so great akindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath ofclose criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of prettygirls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answeredher sister with: "No, I wasn't in love with him, but somehow, sinceyou're so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he pressesme. " It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie's simplicity ofcharacter than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in orderto prove to herself that she wasn't bullied. She didn't care whethershe were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Deliabelieve her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a manshe had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative whofairly brooded with devotion. She wasn't clear herself as to whether itmightn't be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributedinert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yetthought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She feltas she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn't care even if he shouldthink she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes werehard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turnedher own again toward her retreating companions. "They're going todinner; we oughtn't to be dawdling here, " she said. 

"Well, if they're going to dinner they'll have to eat the napkins. I ordered it and I know when it'll be ready, " George Flack answered. "Besides, they're not going to dinner, they're going to walk in thepark. Don't you worry, we shan't lose them. I wish we could!" the youngman added in his boldest gayest manner. 

"You wish we could?"

"I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and noother. "

"Well, I don't know what the dangers are, " said Francie, setting herselfin motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a fewsteps he stopped her again. 

"You won't have confidence. I wish you'd believe what I tell you. "

"You haven't told me anything. " And she turned her back to him, lookingaway at the splendid view. "I do love the scenery, " she added in amoment. 

"Well, leave it alone a little--it won't run away! I want to tellyou something about myself, if I could flatter myself you'd take anyinterest in it. " He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the lowwall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other endgently round with both hands. 

"I'll take an interest if I can understand, " said Francie. 

"You can understand right enough if you'll try. I got to-day some newsfrom America, " he went on, "that I like awfully. The Reverberator hastaken a jump. "

This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. "Taken ajump?"

"It has gone straight up. It's in the second hundred thousand. "

"Hundred thousand dollars?" said Francie. 

"No, Miss Francie, copies. That's the circulation. But the dollars arefooting up too. "

"And do they all come to you?"

"Precious few of them! I wish they did. It's a sweet property. "

"Then it isn't yours?" she asked, turning round to him. It was animpulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knewhow much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once toldher he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife. 

"Mine? You don't mean to say you suppose I own it!" George Flackshouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was sostrong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: "It's apretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing forgranted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator Iwouldn't be stumping round here; I'd give my attention to another branchof the business. That is I'd give my attention to all, but I wouldn'tgo round with the delivery-cart. Still, I'm going to capture the blamedthing, and I want you to help me, " the young man went on; "that'sjust what I wanted to speak to you about. It's a big proposition as itstands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paperthe world has seen. That's where the future lies, and the man who seesit first is the man who'll make his pile. It's a field for enlightenedenterprise that hasn't yet begun to be worked. " He continued, glowingas if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closeditself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of theprospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But itwas not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proofof the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There areten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to dothem. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by theprominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!--fromday to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at everybreakfast-table in the United States: that's what the American peoplewant and that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn'tsay it to every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider myguess as good as the next man's on what's going to be required infuture over there. I'm going for the inside view, the choice bits, thechronique intime, as they say here; what the people want's just whatain't told, and I'm going to tell it. Oh they're bound to have theplums! That's about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a signof 'private' and 'hands off' and 'no thoroughfare' and thinking you cankeep the place to yourself. You ain't going to be able any longer tomonopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to beright you should; it ain't going to continue to be possible to keep outanywhere the light of the Press. Now what I'm going to do is to set upthe biggest lamp yet made and make it shine all over the place. We'llsee who's private then, and whose hands are off, and who'll frustratethe People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That's a sign of the Americanpeople that they DO want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack, "the young man pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to helpthem. But I'll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with theirinformation, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which youcan give me a lovely lift. "

"Well, I don't see how, " said Francie candidly. "I haven't got anychoice bits or any facts of general interest. " She spoke gaily becauseshe was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what hewanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since hedidn't own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was ofthe dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficientlygrasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed tomake out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about herand pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round bya vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that herfather was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quickand happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sumrequired and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of hisenterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her asthey stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't forthe moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion shouldhave a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financialaid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd hadshe meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the ideaof putting her hand into her father's pocket, and she felt that evenDelia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his lookas he replied: "Do you mean to say you don't know, after all I've done?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you've done. "

"Haven't I tried--all I know--to make you like me?"

"Oh dear, I do like you!" cried Francie; "but how will that help you?"

"It will help me if you'll understand how I love you. "

"Well, I won't understand!" replied the girl as she walked off. 

He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: "Doyou mean to say you haven't found that out?"

"Oh I don't find things out--I ain't an editor!" Francie gaily quavered. 

"You draw me out and then you gibe at me, " Mr. Flack returned. 

"I didn't draw you out. Why, couldn't you see me just strain to getaway?"

"Don't you sympathise then with my ideas?"

"Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid, " said Francie, who hadn't in the least taken them in. 

"Well then why won't you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everythingto me. "

"I'm very sorry, but I can't, I can't!" she protested. 

"You could if you would, quick enough. "

"Well then I won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if tomitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "Youmust remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not onelittle wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa. "

"Of course I supposed you'd do that, " he allowed. 

"I mean about your paper. "

"About my paper?"

"So as he could give you the money--to do what you want. "

"Lord, you're too sweet!" George Flack cried with an illumined stare. "Do you suppose I'd ever touch a cent of your father's money?"--a speechnot rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his owndiscriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself neverto be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law'spurse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hourabout his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fallinto line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as aninteresting struggler. The only character in which he could expect itwould be that of Francie's accepted suitor, and then the liberalitywould have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoningnaturally didn't lessen his impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl athis side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for amoment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she couldscarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close toher; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring herhe had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To thisshe replied that if he didn't leave her alone she should cry--and howwould he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? Heanswered "Damn the others!" but it didn't help his case, and at lasthe broke out: "Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you'vepromised Miss Delia?" Francie returned that she hadn't promised MissDelia anything, and her companion went on: "Of course I know what shehas got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grandmonde, as they call it here; but I didn't suppose you'd let her fix yourlife for you. You were very different before HE turned up. "

"She never fixed anything for me. I haven't got any life and I don'twant to have any, " Francie veraciously pleaded. "And I don't know whoyou're talking about either!"

"The man without a country. HE'LL pass you in--that's what your sisterwants. "

"You oughtn't to abuse him, because it was you that presented him, " thegirl pronounced. 

"I never presented him! I'd like to kick him. "

"We should never have seen him if it hadn't been for you, " shemaintained. 

"That's a fact, but it doesn't make me love him any better. He's thepoorest kind there is. "

"I don't care anything about his kind. "

"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I knowthat when I took you up there?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Flack, " said Francie, trying to gain ground from him. 

This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Willyou keep me as a friend?"

"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature. 

"All right, " he replied; and they presently overtook their companions. 

V

Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlowwhose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost himsomething, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might havebeen called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple ofshowing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a badjoke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlowscoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done himby throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacingghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner, " but it had not made its markon his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents andpastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the generalsense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities couldstill swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whoselife the principle of authority played so large a part. He accusedProbert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--andhe knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the familyamong people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as thephrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and thisthe artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting thedifferent members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and allfor each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves whatGaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love themenough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charmingparts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him, and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repairthat mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered infreedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of theParisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, where the seeds of his strictness had been sown. 

Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worriedhim--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely atfault--was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brutewere he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holythings all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well forWaterlow to say that to be a "real" man it was necessary to be a littleof a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painterdeclared that all would be easy if such account hadn't to be taken ofthe marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess. These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gastonexplained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that theother one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain ofwhich mention has already been made, during the later weeks of thesummer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight togetheron the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when theywere settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings forthe portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to thenumber he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was atGranada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, hehad dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dossonor would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking asit had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since theirseparation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objectsappealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinkingof her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinnerat Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlowhimself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that sheshowed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem. 

In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist beganto please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers towardthe end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb thelovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: therepresentative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was alwaysthere of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and thenewspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirantlearned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of hisjournal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When theyoung ladies had gone--and when he didn't go with them; he accompaniedthem not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation ofhis friend's work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation thatrendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which thecanvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl toowell to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt withher in that fashion he mightn't have wanted to deal in any other. Shebloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artisthad caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way inwhich her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it hadrequired a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery andsomehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though itwas no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When inDecember he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter madea comment. "I'll do anything in the world you like--anything you thinkwill help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world youdon't go to them and say: 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake andpretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of itand I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If youhappen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as tokeep it to yourselves. ' That's much the most excellent way. Why in thename of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?"

"Oh you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston, who hadnever pulled so long a face. "One can't break with one's traditionsin an hour, especially when there's so much in them that one likes. Ishan't love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, andI care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I'veeverything to consider--and I'm glad I have. My pleasure in marryingher will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shallgreatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round. "

There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabularyof his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the "acceptance" by anyone but himself of the woman he loved. One's own acceptance--of one'sbliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring roundthose who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with thehighest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt hisrelatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delightin her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make heracquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with suchmalheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in theirusual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl fromher appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by anoblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedgeshould have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. Hissister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would breakher in first and she would help him to break in the others. She washis favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the mostParisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dansles idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and wascapable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. Shehad in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow forthose of others. She wouldn't like the Dossons superficially any betterthan his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies bytheir English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friendsand each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there wasa good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond ofbeauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. Sheappreciated highly Charles Waterlow's talent and there had been talk ofher deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the projectwith so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out. 

According to Gaston's plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers tosee what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to haveworked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly onthe achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow's powers, andnot on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that hehad so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was tomention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she wasas remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture andhearing this, Mme. De Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charmingimpressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabidcuriosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare acreature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if shewould but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would giveher two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn't let theopportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn't go withher--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everythingmuch depended on that, but it couldn't fail. The girl would have to takeher, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn't know whothe demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hairso blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberantlight-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to revealthe visitor's identity only after she had gone. That was a conditionindeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business anodious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it hewould acquit himself honourably. After Mme. De Brecourt had beencaptivated--the question of how Francie would be affected receivedin advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask andconvince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would bemanaged for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her propercharacter; and in short the plot would thicken. 

Gaston's forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he couldanalyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to makehis friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted withthe portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began tofollow in its order. Mme. De Brecourt raved to Waterlow's face--she hadno opinions behind people's backs--about his mastery of his craft; shecould dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice allher own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself;her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--itwas a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which wasthat she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than herbrother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she wasafter all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her familyfor a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions outof newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet werecelebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, hadnever been disastrously exposed. 

"But she must be charming, your young lady, " she said to Gaston whileshe turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie'simage. "She's a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, somethingof Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon. " The young men exchanged a glance, forthis struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in adetached way that the girl was well worth seeing. 

He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew shewould have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words shegreeted him with were: "But she's admirable--votre petite--admirable, admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at themoment--old Mme. D'Outreville--who naturally asked for news of theobject of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questionsand was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described hisyoung friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point ofview of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technicaland critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias:she belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty personsufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzlingcomplexion or the finest eyes in the world. 

"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merveille?" she enquired; to which Mme. De Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother hadsomewhere dug up. "And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?"Mme. D'Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed toread his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point ofbreaking out: "I propose to marry it--there!" But he contained himself, only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to whichshe was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much likedas to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. "Ahthat may take you far!" their visitor cried as she got up to go; and theyoung man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But sheseemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious itwould have been easier to make his confession. When he came back fromaccompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked herif Waterlow's charming sitter had known who she was and if she had beenfrightened. Mme. De Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kindof sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a littleAmerican accidentally encountered couldn't possibly have. "Why shouldshe be frightened? She wouldn't be even if she had known who I was; muchless therefore when I was nothing for her. "

"Oh you weren't nothing for her!" the brooding youth declared; and whenhis sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurkingfact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned;he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted hisfather and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wantedthem to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted shehad been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. De Brecourt protestedthat she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answeredthat if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it inanother way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking aboutand what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: "I want youto treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I'm thinking ofbringing her into the family. "

"Mercy on us--you haven't proposed for her?" cried Mme. De Brecourt. 

"No, but I've sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tellsme that if I present myself there will be no difficulty. "

"Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?"

"Her head's rather out of drawing, but it isn't a part of the affair. She's very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me. "

"For heaven's sake then keep quiet. She's as common as a dressmaker'sbill. "

"Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. You couldn't find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie'sexquisite, and now you'll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel itall; since you HAVE such a free mind. "

"Do you call her by her little name like that?" Mme. De Brecourt asked, giving him another cup of tea. 

"Only to you. She's perfectly simple. It's impossible to imagineanything better. And think of the delight of having that charming objectbefore one's eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out forlife. "

Mme. Brecourt's lively head tossed this argument as high as if she hadcarried a pair of horns. "My poor child, what are you thinking of? Youcan't pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comesalong. You know I hoped you wouldn't marry at all--what a pity I thinkit for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what's hername?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won't. We can't DO that sort ofthing!"

"I shall marry her then, " the young man returned, "without your leavegiven!"

"Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you've always hadit, you're used to it and depend on it, it's a part of your life--you'llhate her like poison at the end of a month. "

"I don't care then. I shall have always had my month. "

"And she--poor thing?"

"Poor thing exactly! You'll begin to pity her, and that will make youcultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make youfind out how adorable she is. Then you'll like her, then you'll loveher, then you'll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the rightthing for ME, I've had, and we shall all be happy together again. "

"But how can you possibly know, with such people, " Mme. De Brecourtdemanded, "what you've got hold of?"

"By having a feeling for what's really, what's delicately good andcharming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this youtry to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, forthe girl's an exquisite fact, she'll PREVAIL, and it will be better toaccept her than to let her accept you. "

Mme. De Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he saidhe knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but hedidn't mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover werethe last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too manyexamples. To this his sister had replied: "Papa will never listen tothat. "

"Listen to what?"

"To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme celase fait. "

"Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he'll know perfectlywhether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That's the sort of thing hedoes know. And he knows quite as well that I'm very difficult to place. "

"You'll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you, " Mme. De Brecourtlaughed, "to replace!"

"Always at any rate to find a wife for. I'm neither fish nor flesh. I'veno country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. Whatposition under the sun do I confer? There's a fatuity in our talking asif we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: quiprend mari prend pays, and you've names about which your husbands take agreat stand. But papa and I--I ask you!"

"As a family nous sommes tres-bien, " said Mme. De Brecourt. "You knowwhat we are--it doesn't need any explanation. We're as good as anythingthere is and have always been thought so. You might do anything youlike. "

"Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--aFrenchwoman. "

"Thank you, my dear"--and Mme. De Brecourt tossed her head. 

"No sister of mine's really French, " returned the young man. 

"No brother of mine's really mad. Marry whomever you like, " Susanwent on; "only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least agentlewoman. Trust me, I've studied life. That's the only thing that'ssafe. "

"Francie's the equal of the first lady in the land. "

"With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!"

"What's the matter with her hat?"

"The sister's told a story. It was a document--it described them, itclassed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!"

"My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don't even know howbad yours is, " the young man went on with assurance. 

"Well, I don't say 'Parus' and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. You know what our feelings are, " his companion as ardently pursued; "ourconvictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, wemay be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; butthere we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible forus to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immenseinconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one'sinterest. But we're made like that and we must understand ourselves. It's of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much asof mine or of that of the others. Don't make a mistake about it--you'llprepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. Wesuffer, we go through tortures, we die!"

The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady's voice, but herbrother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly inseveral turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall cometo an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about thishour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to anyone. "

Mme. De Brecourt's eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of thedoor. "What do you mean by her father's being certainly rich? That'ssuch a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?"

"Ah that's a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he lefther. 

VI

The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofasbeside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel del'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established theirfather in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that whenyou lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet peopleon the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the goodgentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had notyet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he waspatient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to inventamusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers andthe Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from asmart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-roomat the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known tohimself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic ofhis daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue deVilliers. 

This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladiesclustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to theirfaculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vagueand aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. De Brecourt Francie's lover hadwritten to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversationwith her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatienceforbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be sogood as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and tokeep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter. 

"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie's father, leaningfar back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that verylittle, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand oneach knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat. 

"To show, sir--what do you mean?"

"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?"

"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not tosatisfy yourself on that point. My income's derived from three sources. First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from mypoor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation ofours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) whichhe divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of theWar. "'

"The war--what war?" asked Mr. Dosson. 

"Why the Franco-German--"

"Oh THAT old war!" And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. "Well?" he mildlycontinued. 

"Then my father's so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some dayI shall have more--from him. "

Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. "Why, you seem to havefixed it so you live mostly on other folks. "

"I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!" This was spoken with somevivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had saidsomething that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed nosharpness. 

"Well, I guess there won't be any trouble about that. And what does mydaughter say?"

"I haven't spoken to her yet. "

"Haven't spoken to the person most interested?"

"I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first. "

"Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quickenough, " Francie's father just a little dryly stated. There was anelement of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the questionabout his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge. 

"How will you feel if she won't have you after you've exposed yourselfthis way to me?" Mr. Dosson went on. 

"Well, I've a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! Ithink she likes me personally, but what I'm afraid of is that shemay consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen mypeople--she doesn't know what may be before her. "

"Do you mean your family--the folks at home?" said Mr. Dosson. "Don'tyou believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia'sthorough!"

"Well, we're very simple kindly respectable people, as you'll see in aday or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves thehonour to wait upon you, " the young man announced with a temerity thesense of which made his voice tremble. 

"We shall be very happy to see them, sir, " his host cheerfully returned. "Well now, let's see, " the good gentleman socially mused. "Don't youexpect to embrace any regular occupation?"

Gaston smiled at him as from depths. "Have YOU anything of that sort, sir?"

"Well, you have me there!" Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. "It doesn'tseem as if I required anything, I'm looked after so well. The fact isthe girls support me. "

"I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me, " said Gaston Probert. 

"You're prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she'saccustomed?" And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patientspeculation. 

"Well, I don't think she'll miss anything. That is if she does she'llfind other things instead. "

"I presume she'll miss Delia, and even me a little, " it occurred to Mr. Dosson to mention. 

"Oh it's easy to prevent that, " the young man threw off. 

"Well, of course we shall be on hand. " After which Mr. Dosson continuedto follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. "You'llcontinue to reside in Paris?"

"I'll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people arehere--that's a great tie. I'm not without hope that it may--withtime--become a reason for your daughter, " Gaston handsomely wound up. 

"Oh any reason'll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?" Mr. Dosson added, looking at his watch. 

They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the mealsof this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the youngman stopped his companion. "I can't tell you how kind I think it--theway you treat me, and how I'm touched by your confidence. You take mejust as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word. "

"Well, Mr. Probert, " said his host, "if we didn't like you we wouldn'tsmile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn't be any good. Andsince we do like you there ain't any call for them either. I trust mydaughters; if I didn't I'd have stayed at home. And if I trust them, andthey trust you, it's the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain't it?"

"I guess it is!" Gaston delightedly smiled. 

His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. "Now are youvery sure?"

"I thought I was, but you make me nervous. "

"Because there was a gentleman here last year--I'd have put my money onHIM. "

Gaston wondered. "A gentleman--last year?"

"Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hitit off with her. "

"Seigneur Dieu!" Gaston Probert murmured under his breath. 

Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into thesmall dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. "Where are the chickens?" he disappointedly asked. His visitor atfirst supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, butrecognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. Theseyoung ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitorfor her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him ashock--the idea of the newspaper-man's personal success with so rarea creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eyeconvinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack. 

That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sisterthat of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated theexpression with her so markedly looser grasp, "You can send him a notesaying you won't, " Delia explained. 

"Won't marry him?"

"Gracious, no! Won't go to see his sister. You can tell him it's herplace to come to see you first. "

"Oh I don't care, " said Francie wearily. 

Delia judged this with all her weight. "Is that the way you answered himwhen he asked you?"

"I'm sure I don't know. He could tell you best. "

"If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I'd have said 'Oh well, ifyou don't want it any more than that--!'"

"Well, I wish it WAS you, " said Francie. 

"That Mr. Probert was me?"

"No--that you were the one he's after. "

"Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?" her sister suddenlybroke out. 

"No, not much. "

"Well then what's the matter?"

"You've ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what's dueand what ain't. You could meet them all, " Francie opined. 

But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. "Why how can you say, whenthat's just what I'm trying to find out!"

"It doesn't matter anyway; it will never come off, " Francie went on. 

"What do you mean by that?"

"He'll give me up in a few weeks. I'll be sure to do something. "

"Do something--?"

"Well, that will break the charm, " Francie sighed with the sweetestfeeblest fatalism. 

"If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!" Deliadeclared. "ARE you thinking of George Flack?" she repeated in a moment. 

"Oh do leave him alone!" Francie answered in one of her rareirritations. 

"Then why are you so queer?"

"Oh I'm tired!"--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was thesimple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit todevote to the question of Gaston's not having, since their return toParis, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. She was overdone with Delia's theories on this subject, which varied, from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his Americanfriends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in theirgrandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some dayupon the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in ablaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the ideathat they ought to make certain of Gaston's omissions the ground of achallenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that theyought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neitherdoctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy anduneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a stateof native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on hisdomestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more becauseof a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he andhis father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in thatapplication. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of highfashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert's daughters, very often, and shetherefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most hehad done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if oncethey should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what hemeant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seemto them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: somethingexactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they haddreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. Fromthe moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would joinhands and dance round her. Francie's answer to this ingenuity was thatshe didn't know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempton that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence ofwhich was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, formany things in truth were dark to him. He couldn't see his fatherfraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn't see Margaret and Janerecognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He hadanswered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this onlyjust failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope hefounded upon Mme. De Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answerto the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her firstjudgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken herin, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his hearthad been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl's slowsweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview withFrancie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour sheshould be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she wouldbelieve she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. He would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she wouldtake it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a littleback. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superiorflair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted himeven a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready inthis forecast for fifty fibs. 

VII

It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made goodand that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughtersalighted successively at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Francie's visit with her intended to Mme. De Brecourt bore exactly thefruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by acall from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage andkept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chatteringwith her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were alreadysisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of sayingthings as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason, among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she haddropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father's, reflectingwith pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sisterMarguerite there. Mme. De Cliche was with their parent in fact--she hadthree days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat nearhim in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, Maxime de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originallysupposed, Mme. De Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she tookthat little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gaveway to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened herlong face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family wasintensely united, as we see; but that didn't prevent Mme. De Brecourt'shaving a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, and she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been awell-constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a highsea. It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, thatespecially brought her out; then she began her long stories about hercomplicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience. Mme. De Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Coursla Reine; it reminded her of her mother's life and her young days andher dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going intothe world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father'skindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of alinen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to popin and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she haddone when she was a girl. She broke into her sister's confidences now;she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely. 

Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gastonturned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in amortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr. Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. De Brecourt paid themanother visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied byher husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country fullof anxious participation. M. De Douves was the person who took thefamily, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign ofcrude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman withthick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabotswith straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing thathe looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of thequality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one hadever ventured to clear up this point by a question. "La famille c'estmoi" appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--hehad very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptralair. Mme. De Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, inconfirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. De Maintenon:she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked backto the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as faraway. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in theVendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affectedand which added to her look of having come down from a remote past orreverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wroteroy and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was whollyrestricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She hadextraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, andviewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; thatis not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but asgrandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen toher, that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of adwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectationthat she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. De Brecourt'seyes this pair were very shabby, they didn't payer de mine--they fairlysmelt of their province; "but for the reality of the thing, " she oftensaid to herself, "they're worth all of us. We're diluted and they'repure, and any one with an eye would see it. " "The thing" was thelegitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, theunconscious, grand air. 

The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satindrawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted andproposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston'srelations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn't do. The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probablynever witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice forhim, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew theworst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed toit, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. "Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we've donefor him:" Mme. De Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche hadexpressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves fromwhich he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days withgreat frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help forhim in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that heshowed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latterquality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it wasimpossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for heheld that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished fromthe savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that hisprivate irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr. Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently accountfor nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days offamiliar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on withthem--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one coulddo that even if one couldn't converse with them. He succeeded in makingMme. De Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quickinflammability. "Yes, " she said, "we must insist on their positive, noton their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charmingprimitive instincts--we must work those!" And the brother and sisterexcited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it mustbe added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarmthe depth of their responsibility. 

On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenhamwith his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four ofMr. Probert's, with Gaston's rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de laConcorde. 

"We should have to have them to dinner. " The young man noted hisfather's conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were notyet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them hadnot made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman downmore easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all theimmense luck that it hadn't been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds;which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he couldbear French noise but couldn't for the life of him bear American. Asfor English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was acountry with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dossonhad scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which wasexactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matchedit--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie's lover knewmoreover--though he was a little disappointed that no charmedexclamation should have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that thegirl's rare spell had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn'thave liked her. 

"Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon, " he replied. "They'll like itso much. "

"And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?"

"Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can havelater. "

"All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM, " saidMr. Probert. Then he added: "Poor creatures!" The fine ironic humanesound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into hisfather's arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tenderallowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierceFrench critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. Themeeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerceany more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder's hintedpity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was reallywhat he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, hadprejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and someof them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such niceinconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorousdeviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an olddarling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: "Ithink you told me you're dining out. "

"Yes, with our friends. "

"'Our friends'? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on yourreturn; but not later than half-past ten. "

From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had foundit refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. Thisreflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little hehimself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, but he couldn't bear to think of that, and the sense of the furtherarguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. Thedinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of thisstate of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, about his poppa. 

"Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!" Deliadeclared. "That's my idea of a real gentleman. "

"Ah for that--!" said Gaston. 

"He's too sweet for anything. I'm not a bit afraid of him, " Franciecontributed. 

"Why in the world should you be?"

"Well, I am of you, " the girl professed. 

"Much you show it!" her lover returned. 

"Yes, I am, " she insisted, "at the bottom of all. "

"Well, that's what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master. "

"Well, I don't know; I'm more afraid than that. You'll see. "

"I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense, " said happy Gaston. 

Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor;he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of hisprospective son-in-law's perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knewthis silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn't at all meanhe hadn't been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothinghad been given him; he hadn't, like his so differently-appointed youngfriend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of hislife had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely nohistory with which anything occurring in the present connexion could becontinuous, and Mr. Probert's appearance had neither founded a state norproduced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked hisfather he would have said at the most: "Oh I guess he's all right!" Butwhat was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston's view wasthe attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, who had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and thegentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to havebeen artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They hadnot in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a longhistorical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channelsand grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularlylittle the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word whenthey told her that the whole maniere d'etre of her family inspired themwith an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. De Clichehad been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the oldnoblesse of France. It wouldn't have occurred to the girl that suchthings need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set ina frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have takenfor granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now;he noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might coverpitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection andcorresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his peopleshould be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such ahigh standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And withoutsincerity how could people get on together when it came to theirsettling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, andthe surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocencewas great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt:there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection. 

VIII

When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied withhis father's request by returning to the room in which the old manhabitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. "Of course you'll continue to live with me. You'll understand that Idon't consent to your going away. You'll have the rooms occupied atfirst by Susan and Alphonse. "

Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to thefuture tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lostin a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. Thisproved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, andvery serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, ofinstitutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up moreparticularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He satthere alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplightshining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He hadused of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectlyaware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a littlefrivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--exceptperhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were allsocial creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the familyhad acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a societyof conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightlytarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flewabout through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before thechimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very oftenbeen his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type thatenjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he wasso transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate. His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usuallynot more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an "Ahyou know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a partof the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them overthe river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profanedshrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert'spleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large, though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knewthe succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the mostsalient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother, and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. De Marignac, to whom theold boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven andsometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the placeshe had held in his father's life and affection, and the terms onwhich they had grown up together--her people had been friends of hisgrandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with ayoung son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the timeof Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying hissisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertionswere often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in asociety in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he wouldhave guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father saidto that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to thefountain; they hadn't left their own behind them in Carolina; it hadbeen large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was inCarolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian wasby nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why theylet him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, theconciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. DeMarignac, who had been her friend too, the young man's mother's, he wasgentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt himto care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the truefaith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifferencedoubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation. 

"We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us, " his son said. "We shall fill out the house a little, and won't that be rather animprovement, shrunken as you and I have become?"

"You'll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and theother girl. "

"Ah Francie won't give up her father and sister, certainly; and whatshould you think of her if she did? But they're not intrusive; they'reessentially modest people; they won't put themselves upon us. They havegreat natural discretion, " Gaston declared. 

"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she's always assuring one of it, "Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak tome. "

"He didn't, poor dear man, know what to say. "

"How then shall I know what to say to HIM?"

"Ah you always know!" Gaston smiled. 

"How will that help us if he doesn't know what to answer?"

"You'll draw him out. He's full of a funny little shade of bonhomie. "

"Well, I won't quarrel with your bonhomme, " said Mr. Probert--"if he'ssilent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, though she's evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funnylittle shade. It's not for ourselves I'm afraid; it's for them. They'llbe very unhappy. "

"Never, never!" said Gaston. "They're too simple. They'll remain so. They're not morbid nor suspicious. And don't you like Francie? Youhaven't told me so, " he added in a moment. 

"She talks about 'Parus, ' my dear boy. "

"Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French;she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as goodas her English. "

"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she's verypretty and I'm sure she's good. But I won't tell you she is a marvel, because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point ofview and your own experience everything--that I've seen beauties withoutnumber. I've known the most charming women of our time--women of anorder to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin tobelong. I'm difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore whenyou pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us asa miracle, feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lostone's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish bythe sword as by famine. "

"I hoped she'd fascinate you on the spot, " Gaston rather ruefullyremarked. 

"'Fascinate'--the language you fellows use! How many times in one's lifeis one likely to be fascinated?"

"Well, she'll charm you yet. "

"She'll never know at least that she doesn't: I'll engage for that, "said Mr. Probert handsomely. 

"Ah be sincere with her, father--she's worth it!" his son broke out. 

When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and afastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was moreprovoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, forhe had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of ratherstupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fineperceptions one didn't have: so far from its showing experience itshowed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God shewas just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there wereno stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn't know what old frumpshis father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls infront, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a pointsuggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he couldremember Mme. De Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, withSundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in thatmilieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, thepictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of thelady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and aCroyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigiesthe public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad, Canova's--make their authors burrow in holes for shame. 

"And what else is she worth?" Mr. Probert asked after a momentaryhesitation. 

"How do you mean, what else?"

"Her immense prospects, that's what Susan has been putting forward. Susan's insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do youmind my speaking of them?"

Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane'shaving been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if hewere under an obligation to it. "To whom, sir?" he asked. 

"Oh only to you. "

"You can't do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived thequestion of money and he was splendid. We can't be more mercenary thanhe. "

"He waived the question of his own, you mean?" said Mr. Probert. 

"Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right. " The young man flatteredhimself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view ofpecuniary convenience. 

"Well, it's your affair--or your sisters', " his father returned. 

"It's their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best ofit. "

"It's very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they'dbe tired of their own chatter, " Gaston impatiently sighed. 

Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: "Ithink they are. However, the period of discussion's closed. We've takenthe jump. " He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly:"Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion. "

"Of my opinion?"

"That she's charming. "

"Confound them then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinderwas childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but itbelonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him asan old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embraceit. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who hadbeen standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention fromprotest at Gaston's petulance was the more generous as he was capable, for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the wholeconnexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. Gaston didn't care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himselfin bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. Thiswas especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of twoof his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapprovalon the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether shedispleased M. De Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime andRaoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston waswith him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth ofdiscussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, buthe managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certainimportance to be made. "It seems rather odd to me that you should allappear to accept the step I'M about to take as a necessity disagreeableat the best, when I myself hold that I've been so exceedinglyfortunate. "

Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes onthe fire. "You won't be content till we're enthusiastic. She seems anamiable girl certainly, and in that you're fortunate. "

"I don't think you can tell me what would be better--what you'd havepreferred, " the young man said. 

"What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember thatI wasn't madly impatient to see you married. "

"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that as things have turnedout you shouldn't be struck with my felicity. To get something socharming and to get it of our own species!" Gaston explained. 

"Of our own species? Tudieu!" said his father, looking up. 

"Surely it's infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marryan American. There's a sad want of freshness--there's even aprovinciality--in the way we've Gallicised. "

"Against Americans I've nothing to say; some of them are the best thingthe world contains. That's precisely why one can choose. They're farfrom doing all like that. "

"Like what, dear father?"

"Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwisewhat they are, one wouldn't look at them. "

"Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities. "

"Well, perhaps they'll do for queer fish, " said Mr. Probert with alittle conclusive sigh. 

"Yes, let them pass at that. They'll surprise you. "

"Not too much, I hope!" cried the old man, opening his volume again. 

The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn't neverthelessstartle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gastonto proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needfulcircumstances of material preparation and social support, before somethree months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately underthis condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endearherself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for theDossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective artssome modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help everyone to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson's designs and Delia's tookno articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his futurewife's relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew thatMr. Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to"start" her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at therest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposedto "do" for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused thananything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions inregard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of anotherconvocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. De Brecourt's bold frontwon another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, thatit was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. "Lord helpus, is that what they call confidence?" the young man gasped, guessingthe way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how theywould look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could alwaysfall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their "forms"; thoughindeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear sostriking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of theirmeddling too much. 

Mr. Probert's property was altogether in the United States: he resembledother discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America wasthe taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engagingto make for his son's marriage rendered advisable some attention, on thespot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted onlyby report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond thesea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far fromthe master's eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause ofthat vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort hadbecome impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, andgo quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practicallyfaced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he hadbest wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciouslyaccompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious anintroducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for anequal energy on Mr. Dosson's part suddenly appeared to reach and tomove that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, to attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties, since he couldn't in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Notonly would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, butGaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, thatDelia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personalphilosophy, wouldn't have felt his doing so square with propriety. Theyoung man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than, in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; sheherself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Deliadeclared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris tillshe had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing thatshe too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue deLille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for himin the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position ofmarked disfavour as yet to any "visiting. " AFTER, if he liked, butnot till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of herrefusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate. 

All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. Dosson: "I'm not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you'll coachme properly, and trust me, why shouldn't I rush across and transactyour business as well as my father's?" Strange as it appeared, Francieoffered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, whichwould last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality ofany member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for thesolution; he remarked "Well, sir, you've got a big brain" at the end ofa morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston madehis preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do herjustice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimateway even to Mme. De Brecourt's had been founded on a fear that in closequarters she might do something that would make them all despise her. Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the verydelirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if sheexpected never to be at close quarters with "tous les siens. " "Ah yes, but then it will be safer, " she pleaded; "then we shall be married andby so much, shan't we? be beyond harm. " In rejoinder to which he hadsimply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lovertook ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stoppingfor a last word at the Hotel de l'Univers et the Cheltenham on hisway to catch the night express to London--he was to sail fromLiverpool--Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satinsaloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back. 

IX

Mr. Flack's relations with his old friends didn't indeed, after hisreturn, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercoursea year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in thesituation. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about thepast: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, inpledges now repudiated. 

"What's the matter all the same? Won't you come round there with us someday?" Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason whythe young journalist shouldn't be a welcome and easy presence in theCours la Reine. 

Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he knowa lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they shouldhave their own society? The young man's treatment of the question washumorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly "shed" him Mr. Dosson returned "Well, I guess you'll grow again!" And Francie madethe point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knewperfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the wayhe flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of beinga good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames deBrecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--occupiedmany of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, froma premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in theircompany--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would shape, and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could benicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her father, and even to Delia, as had been his wont. 

But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature wassuggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn'tcare for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always tookwhat was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt theirold companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings inpublic places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to looksometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack "located" themsomewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush backto them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearanceusually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gastonbecause Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; andhis society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great. Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit;he had come twice to the hotel since his son's departure and had said, smiling and reproachful, "You neglect us, you neglect us, my dearsir!" The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Deliaexplained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy forthe neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne anycopious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, inthe Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a cardon which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibilityof print, the words "So sorry!" Her father had told her he would give inthe card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing. There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert's remark wasan allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of hissons-in-law. Oughtn't Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and notsimply through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to theirwives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subjectcame up in George Flack's presence the old man said he would go roundif Mr. Flack would accompany him. "All right, we'll go right along!"Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a living factqualified only by the "mercy, " to Delia Dosson, that the other twogentlemen were not at home. "Suppose they SHOULD get in?" she had saidlugubriously to her sister. 

"Well, what if they do?" Francie had asked. 

"Why the count and the marquis won't be interested in Mr. Flack. "

"Well then perhaps he'll be interested in them. He can write somethingabout them. They'll like that. "

"Do you think they would?" Delia had solemnly weighed it. 

"Why, yes, if he should say fine things. "

"They do like fine things, " Delia had conceded. "They get off so manythemselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it's a different style. "

"Well, people like to be praised in any style. "

"That's so, " Delia had continued to brood. 

One afternoon, coming in about three o'clock, Mr. Flack found Franciealone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hoursof independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentallymissed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double itsusual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room ofthe American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command alandau as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to thedressmaker's, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward theprogress of her sister's wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled incomposition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover muchthe same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standingat the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when sheshut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify toher costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events shewas still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, andthere was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyaltyto Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of "recesstime" in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor. 

She hadn't quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of thebright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set apractical human limit. 

"I wouldn't have ventured, " he observed on entering, "to propose this, but I guess I can do with it now it's come. "

"What can you do with?" she asked, wiping her pen. 

"Well this happy chance. Just you and me together. "

"I don't know what it's a chance for. "

"Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. Itmakes me so to see you look so happy. "

"It makes you miserable?"--Francie took it gaily but guardedly. 

"You ought to understand--when I say something so noble. " And settlinghimself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: "Well, how do you get onwithout Mr. Probert?"

"Very well indeed, thank you. " The tone in which the girl spoke wasnot an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued hisenquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever inhis life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. Hewas eminently capable of the sense that it wasn't in his interest tostrike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appeara real reliable "gentleman friend. " At the same time he was notindifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as ofa good fellow once badly "sold, " which would always give him a certainpull on what he called to himself her lovely character. "Well, you're inthe real 'grand' old monde now, I suppose, " he resumed at last, notwith an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary butdetached wistfulness. 

"Oh I'm not in anything; I'm just where I've always been. "

"I'm sorry; I hoped you'd tell me a good lot about it, " said Mr. Flack, not with levity. 

"You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about itfor?"

Well, he took some trouble for his reason. "Dear Miss Francie, a poordevil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up thingshas to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate todo, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see. "

She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. "What do you want tostudy-up?"

"Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. Itry and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or tosell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or canbuy. I hoped YOU'D have something to tell--for I'm not talking now ofanything but THAT. I don't believe but what you've seen a good deal ofnew life. You won't pretend they ain't working you right in, charming asyou are. "

"Do you mean if they've been kind and sweet to me? They've been verykind and sweet, " Francie mid. "They want to do even more than I'll letthem. "

"Ah why won't you let them?" George Flack asked almost coaxingly. 

"Well, I do, when it comes to anything, " the girl went on. "You can'tresist them really; they've got such lovely ways. "

"I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways, " hercompanion observed after a silence. 

"Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don'tsee why it should interest you. "

"Don't I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn't I tellyou that once?"--he put it very straight. 

"Well, you were foolish ever, and you'd be foolish to say it again, "Francie replied. 

"Oh I don't want to say anything, I've had my lesson. But I couldlisten to you all day. " Francie gave an exclamation of impatience andincredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: "Don't you remember what you told methat time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said Imight remain your friend. "

"Well, that's all right, " said the girl. 

"Then ain't we interested in the development of our friends--in theirimpressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person likeme, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got toknow the world. "

"Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?" Francie beautifullygaped. 

"About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it's difficult toget at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you've done. "

"What do you mean? What measures have I done?"

"Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing. Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don'tyou think I ought to know?" smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. "Ithought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They're asociety apart, and they must be very curious. "

"Yes, they're very curious, " Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Thenshe said: "Do you want to put them in the paper?"

George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid, suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. "Oh I'm very carefulabout what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don'tyou remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in theright way and of the right brand. If I can't get it in the shape I likeit I don't want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straightfrom the tap, is what I'm after. I don't want to hear what some oneor other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or otherbelieved or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plentyof that flowing in, and the best part of the job's to keep it out. People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over theplace; there's the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: 'You'vegot to do something first, then I'll see; or at any rate you've got toBE something!'"

"We sometimes see the Reverberator. You've some fine pieces, " Franciehumanely replied. 

"Sometimes only? Don't they send it to the old gentleman--the weeklyedition? I thought I had fixed that, " said George Flack. 

"I don't know; it's usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I;she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can. "

"Well, it's all literature, " said Mr. Flack; "it's all the press, thegreat institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come outfirst in the papers. It's the history of the age. "

"I see you've got the same aspirations, " Francie remarked kindly. 

"The same aspirations?"

"Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain. "

"Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. Everything's so changed. "

"Are you the proprietor of the paper now?" the girl went on, determinednot to catch this sentimental echo. 

"What do you care? It wouldn't even be delicate in me to tell you; forI DO remember the way you said you'd try and get your father to help me. Don't say you've forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, that isn't the sort of help I want now and it wasn't the sort of help Imeant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some oneto say to me once in a while 'Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you'llcome out all right. ' You see I'm a working-man and I don't pretend tobe anything else, " Francie's companion went on. "I don't live on theaccumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I've foughtfor: I'm a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, butthere's one dark spot in it all the same. "

"And what's that?" Francie decided not quite at once to ask. 

"That it makes you ashamed of me. "

"Oh how can you say?" And she got up as if a sense of oppression, ofvague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace asshe had lately arrived at. 

"You wouldn't be ashamed to go round with me?"

"Round where?"

"Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last. " GeorgeFlack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his brighteyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated hecontinued: "Then I'm not such a friend after all. "

She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: "Wherewould you like to go?"

"You could render me a service--a real service--without anyinconvenience probably to yourself. Isn't your portrait finished?"

"Yes, but he won't give it up. "

"Who won't give it up?"

"Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case heshould take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won't change it--it's solovely as it is!" Francie made a mild joke of saying. 

"I hear it's magnificent and I want to see it, " said George Flack. 

"Then why don't you go?"

"I'll go if you'll take me; that's the service you can render me. "

"Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!" Franciecried. 

"I go where I'm welcome, not where I ain't. I don't want to push intothat studio alone; he doesn't want me round. Oh you needn't protest, "the young man went on; "if a fellow's made sensitive he has got to stayso. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn't likenewspaper-men. Some people don't, you know. I ought to tell you thatfrankly. "

Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. "Why ifit hadn't been for you "--I'm afraid she said "hadn't have been"--"I'dnever have sat to him. "

Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. "If it hadn't been forme I think you'd never have met your future husband. "

"Perhaps not, " said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to hercompanion's surprise. 

"I only say that to remind you that after all I've a right to ask you toshow me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or nextday or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself asamply repaid. With you I shan't be afraid to go in, for you've a rightto take any one you like to see your picture. That's the rule here. "

"Oh the day you're afraid, Mr. Flack--!" Francie laughed without fear. She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; forhe truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was morelistless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged shewinced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after theprize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtednessto him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but atpresent she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into theattitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification aftertoo multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits. 

"Of course I must be quite square with you, " the young man said in atone that struck her as "higher, " somehow, than any she had ever heardhim use. "If I want to see the picture it's because I want to writeabout it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You mustunderstand that in advance. I wouldn't write about it without seeing it. We don't DO that"--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for hisorgan. 

"J'espere bien!" said Francie, who was getting on famously with herFrench. "Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it. "

"I don't know that he cares for my praise and I don't care much whetherHE likes it or not. For you to like it's the principal thing--we must dowith that. "

"Oh I shall be awfully proud. "

"I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you're the prettiest girlthat has ever come over. "

"You may say what you like, " Francie returned. "It will be immense funto be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow. "

"You're too kind, " said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed itdown a moment with his glove; then he said: "I wonder if you'll mind ourgoing alone?"

"Alone?"

"I mean just you and me. "

"Oh don't you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirtytimes. "

"That'll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anythingelse could make me do, that we're still old friends. I couldn't bear theend of THAT. I'll come at 3. 15, " Mr. Flack went on, but without even yettaking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, whether it were as good as last year and there were many people init and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on adifferent plane and scarcely waiting for the girl's answer: "And now forinstance are they very bigoted? That's one of the things I should liketo know. "

"Very bigoted?"

"Ain't they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father;what they call here the throne and the altar? And don't they want thethrone too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman, " Mr. Flack added. "And those grand ladies and all the rest of them. "

"They're very religious, " said Francie. "They're the most religiouspeople I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know himpersonally quite well. They're always going down to Rome. "

"And do they mean to introduce you to him?"

"How do you mean, to introduce me?"

"Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome. "

"Oh we're going to Rome for our voyage de noces!" said Francie gaily. "Just for a peep. "

"And won't you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won't consent toa Protestant one. "

"We're going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. De Brecourttook me to see at the Madeleine. "

"And will it be at the Madeleine, too?"

"Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame. "

"And how will your father and sister like that?"

"Our having it at Notre Dame?"

"Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church. "

"Oh Delia wants it at the best place, " said Francie simply. Then sheadded: "And you know poppa ain't much on religion. "

"Well now that's what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talkingabout, " Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3. 15 sharp. 

Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return ofthe latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to inrelation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sittinghen, so little did she know that it was right ("as" it was right Deliausually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemenafter she was engaged. 

"Intimate? You wouldn't think it's very intimate if you were to see me!"Francie cried with amusement. 

"I'm sure I don't want to see you, " Delia declared--the sharpness ofwhich made her sister suddenly strenuous. 

"Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn't been for Mr. Flack wewould never have had that picture, and that if it hadn't been for thatpicture I should never have got engaged?"

"It would have been better if you hadn't, if that's the way you're goingto behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you. "

This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia'srigour. "I'm only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow. "

"Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?"

"Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has madehim feel it. You know Gaston told us so. "

"He told us HE couldn't bear him; that's what he told us, " said Delia. 

"All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise, "Francie went on. 

"That's just what I do, " returned the elder girl; "but things that arevery different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons. "

"I've others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece inthe paper about it. "

"About your picture?"

"Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing. "

Delia stared a moment. "Well, I hope it will be a good one!" she saidwith a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate. 

X

When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into CharlesWaterlow's studio she found Mme. De Cliche before the great canvas. Sheenjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming allthat way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait oncemore. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work hadexcited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first oftheir making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations aboutit which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequentlyas, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to themerit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as tosay that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn't make her look likea lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to thecharacter in which it represented her, but he didn't think it wellpainted. "Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!" he hadexclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, towardmystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. TheProberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question ofart. "Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston hadexplained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the oldgame. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow's game had already been abewilderment to Mr. Probert. 

Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche'shaving told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thoughtby this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like alady. Mme. De Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as ifin fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, onFrancie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she hadasked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girlreplied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only ofherself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. De Cliche's grace stiffened, taking ona shade that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual, among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. De Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her thesecond impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this secondimpression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps othersbehind it, but the girl hadn't yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlowmightn't have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he wasnone the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show himthe work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, movinghim off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the twogentlemen were at a distance Mme. De Cliche expressed to Francie theconviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Franciereplied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else withMr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that thisgentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoedthe term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only bigeditor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the restof the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it wasMr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. Mme. De Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the causeprojected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps notexactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gastonwould like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. "I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought towant me to be polite to a person who did so much for us. " Soon afterthis Mme. De Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of theexistence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approachedthe door. She didn't kiss our young lady again, and the girlobserved that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words "Adieumademoiselle. " She had already noted that in proportion as the Probertsbecame majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flackremained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they wereseated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson'sopen landau--her companion said "And now where shall we go?" He spokeas if on their way from the hotel he hadn't touched upon the pleasantvision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the daywas made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed towish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose thatparticular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:

"Wherever you like, wherever you like!" And she sat there swaying herparasol, looking about her, giving no order. 

"Au Bois, " said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on thesoft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easyelastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. "Was that ladyone of your new relatives?"

"Do you mean one of Mr. Probert's old ones? She's his sister. "

"Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn't saygood-morning to me?"

"She didn't want you to remain with me. She doesn't like you to go roundwith me. She wanted to carry me off. "

"What has she got against me?" Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentouscalm. 

Francie seemed to consider a little. "Oh it's these funny French ideas. "

"Funny? Some of them are very base, " said George Flack. 

His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to rightand left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The greatarchitectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polishedshop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemedto make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everythinggay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. "Well, I like Parisanyway!" Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness. 

"It's lucky for you, since you've got to live here. "

"I haven't got to; there's no obligation. We haven't settled anythingabout that. "

"Hasn't that lady settled it for you?"

"Yes, very likely she has, " said Francie placidly enough. "I don't likeher so well as the others. "

"You like the others very much?"

"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you. "

"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly, " Mr. Flackdeclared. 

"Yes, she's the most haughty, " Francie allowed. 

"Well, what is it all about?" her friend demanded. "Who are theyanyway?"

"Oh it would take me three hours to tell you, " the girl cheerfullysighed. "They go back a thousand years. "

"Well, we've GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours. " And George Flacksettled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "IAM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie, " he went on. "It'smany a day since I've been to the old Bois. I don't fool round much inwoods. "

Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was mostagreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how youcan stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid. "

"Well, they tell me you like them better after you're married. "

"Why after they're married they're worse--I mean the ideas. Every oneknows that. "

"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk, " Franciesaid. 

"And do they talk a great deal?"

"Well, I should think so. They don't do much else, and all about thequeerest things--things I never heard of. "

"Ah THAT I'll bet my life on!" Mr. Flack returned with understanding. 

"Of course, " his companion obligingly proceeded, "'ve had mostconversation with Mr. Probert. "

"The old gentleman?"

"No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it's not he thathas told me most--it's Mme. De Brecourt. She's great on life, on THEIRlife--it's very interesting. She has told me all their histories, alltheir troubles and complications. "

"Complications?" Mr. Flack threw off. "That's what she calls them. It seems very different from America. It's just like a beautifulstory--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you cansee--without being told. "

"What sort of things?"

"Well, like Mme. De Cliche's--" But Francie paused as if for a word. 

Her friend was prompt with assistance. "Do you mean her complications?"

"Yes, and her husband's. She has terrible ones. That's why one mustforgive her if she's rather peculiar. She's very unhappy. "

"Do you mean through her husband?"

"Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. De Brives. "

Mr. Flack's hand closed over it. "Mme. De Brives?"

"Yes, she's lovely, " said Francie. "She ain't very young, but she'sfearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. De Villepreux. Mme. De Cliche can't bear Mme. De Villepreux. "

"Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man, " George Flack moralised. 

"Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against themarriage. "

"Who had?--against what marriage?"

"When Maggie Probert became engaged. "

"Is that what they call her--Maggie?"

"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. DeCliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her. "

"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!" Mr. Flack permittedhimself to guess. "And who's Mme. De Villepreux?" he proceeded. 

"She's the daughter of Mme. De Marignac. "

"And who's THAT old sinner?" the young man asked. 

"Oh I guess she's dead, " said Francie. "She used to be a great friend ofMr. Probert--of Gaston's father. "

"He used to go to tea with her?"

"Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since herdeath. "

"The way they do come out with 'em!" Mr. Flack chuckled. "And who themischief's Susan?"

"Why Mme. De Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. De Marignac. Mme. De Villepreux isn't so nice as her mother. She was brought up with theProberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime. "

"With Maxime?"

"That's M. De Cliche. "

"Oh I see--I see!" and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached thetop of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch towhich that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down evenon splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of theTuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Damepainted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a soundingstream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenueleading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene;he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardenson either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brownboskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet tospend there, of the rest of Francie's pleasant prattle, of the placenear the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of thebench where they might sit down. "I see, I see, " he repeated withappreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand oldmonde. "

XI

One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announcedhis return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. De Brecourt. It causedher some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guardher against vain fears. "Please come to me the moment you've receivedthis--I've sent the carriage. I'll explain when you get here what I wantto see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here. " Thecoupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, andthe girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--ifconference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side meltedinto blankness on the other. "It's for something bad--something bad, "Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she wasunable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark ofa practical character in which he had indulged in relation to hisdaughter's alliance. 

"No you won't--no you won't, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, butlet them see that they can't whistle for all of us. " It was the firstsign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. Thatquestion had never troubled him. 

"I know what it is, " said Delia while she arranged her sister'sgarments. "They want to talk about religion. They've got the priests;there's some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you. "

"Then you'd better take a waterproof!" Francie's father called after heras she flitted away. 

She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all therefor; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed inthe phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in theircollective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there wasalways something of the tribunal. Mme. De Brecourt came out to meet herin the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon;Francie knew it as her hostess's "own room, " a lovely boudoir--in which, considerably to the girl's relief, the rest of the family were notassembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--theywere waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile;she kissed her as if she didn't know she was doing it. She laughedas she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a differentdemonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckonwith. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sittingbeside her on a sofa and Mme. De Brecourt had her hand, which she heldso tight that it almost hurt her. Susan's eyes were in their naturesalient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of herhead. 

"We're upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on thehouse. "

"What's the matter--what's the matter?" Francie asked, pale and withparted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found outin America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it hadbeen stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off forthat?

"You must understand the closeness of our union with you from oursending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Ourjoys are your joys and our indignations are yours. "

"What IS the matter, PLEASE?" the girl repeated. Their "indignations"opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortificationfor the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece inthe paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little aboutherself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flackcould only have published something pleasant--something to be proudof. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that thepicture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, rememberinghow she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day atSaint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially whenthey sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Boisde Boulogne. 

"Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America tomy father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandalabout our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her 'Margot, ' about Maxime and Leonie deVillepreux, saying he's her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and yourdimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relatein the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa's in the most awfulstate!" and Mme. De Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken withthe volubility of horror and passion. "You're outraged with us and youmust suffer with us, " she went on. "But who has done it? Who has doneit? Who has done it?"

"Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!" Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear todisavow her knowledge. 

"Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime's in anunspeakable rage. Everything's at end, we've been served up tothe rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know suchthings?--and they all so infamously false!" The poor woman poured forthher woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn't knowwhat to ask first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that wretchMarguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh Francie, what hashappened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw youafterwards--walking with him--in the Bois. "

"Well, I didn't see her, " the girl said. 

"You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that's what Margotremembers. Oh Francie, Francie!" wailed Mme. De Brecourt, whose distresswas pitiful. 

"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He'san old friend--a friend of poppa's--and I like him very much. What myfather allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued. She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air oftragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences ofan act she herself didn't know, couldn't comprehend nor measure yet. But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blinddefence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of herconsternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--itwould appear to be some self-seeking deception. 

"Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devilhas he paid to tattle to him?"

"You scare me awfully--you terrify me, " the girl could but plead. "I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it, I don'tunderstand it. Of course I've talked to Mr. Flack. "

"Oh Francie, don't say it--don't SAY it! Dear child, you haven't talkedto him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!" Mme. DeBrecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemedto supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. "You shall see the paper; they've got it in the other room--the mostdisgusting sheet. Margot's reading it to her husband; he can't readEnglish, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papatried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn't, he was too sick. There's a quantity about Mme. De Marignac--imagine only! And a quantityabout Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they seeit in Brittany--heaven preserve us!"

Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. "And what does it say about me?"

"Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with themost odious details, and your having made a match among the 'rare oldexclusives. ' And the strangest stuff about your father--his havinggone into a 'store' at the age of twelve. And something about your poorsister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, asthey call it, and the way we've pushed and got on and our ridiculouspretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul's sister, whohad that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal thingsin shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such athing? It's ages ago, it's dead and buried!"

"You told me, you told me yourself, " said Francie quickly. She turnedred the instant she had spoken. 

"Don't say it's YOU--don't, don't, my darling!" cried Mme. De Brecourt, who had stared and glared at her. "That's what I want, that's what youmust do, that's what I see you this way for first alone. I've answeredfor you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you mustdeny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--shehas given it to the others. I've told them they ought to be ashamed, that it's an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I've doneeverything for the last hour to protect you. I'm your godmother, youknow, and you mustn't disappoint me. You're incapable, and you must sayso, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE'LL have seenit over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HISanguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you. " Mme. DeBrecourt hurried on, and her companion's bewilderment deepened to seehow the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. "You must say to my father, face to face, that you're incapable--thatyou're stainless. "

"Stainless?" Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. But the sheep-dog had to be faced. "Of course I knew he wanted to writea piece about the picture--and about my marriage. "

"About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you'reat the bottom of ALL!" cried Mme. De Brecourt, flinging herself away, falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with herhands. 

"He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!" Francieasseverated loud. "But he seems to have printed more. "

"MORE? I should think so!" And Mme. De Brecourt rebounded, standingbefore her. "And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterousfacts?"

"I told him--I told him--I don't know what. It was for his paper--hewants everything. It's a very fine paper, " said the girl. 

"A very fine paper?" Mme. De Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. "Have you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, mybrother!" she quavered again, turning away. 

"If your brother were here you wouldn't talk to me this way--he'dprotect me, Gaston would!" cried Francie, on her feet, seizing herlittle muff and moving to the door. 

"Go away, go away or they'll kill you!" her friend went on excitedly. "After all I've done for you--after the way I've lied for you!" And shesobbed, trying to repress her sobs. 

Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. "I'll go home. Poppa, poppa!" she almost shrieked, reaching the door. 

"Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in suchideas!" These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. De Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening beforeshe could pass out. "Hush--hush--they're coming in here, they're tooanxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have saidthings--and such things: say it all comes from HER!"

"Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?" cried Francie, shaking herselffree. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. De Brecourt walked quicklyto the window, turning her back. Mme. De Cliche was there and Mr. Probert and M. De Brecourt and M. De Cliche. They entered in silence andM. De Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Franciehad never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experiencethese four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back intotheir box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stoodin the middle of the room; Mme. De Brecourt gazed out of the window, wiping her tears; Mme. De Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled andpartly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from oneface to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravagedexpression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he wentto the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. Heseemed ten years older. 

"Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de Clicheslowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignantreproach. 

"Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?" his wife asked, thrusting the paper toward her. "It's quite at your service!" But asFrancie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, asit opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. DeCliche carried her head very far aloft. 

"She has nothing to do with it--it's just as I told you--she'soverwhelmed, " said Mme. De Brecourt, remaining at the window. 

"You'd do well to read it--it's worth the trouble, " Alphonse de Brecourtremarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he notedher tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; theyseemed somehow to put her in the wrong. 

"Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?"Mme. De Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forcedcalmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of thosewho could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were tremblingwithin--which made Francie draw back. "C'est pourtant rempli dechoses--which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, greatheaven! It's right and left--no one's spared--it's a deluge of thelowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensionsI had--I couldn't resist them, though I thought of nothing so awfulas this, God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow's with yourjournalist. "

"I've told her everything--don't you see she's aneantie? Let her go, let her go!" cried Mme. De Brecourt all distrustfully and still at thewindow. 

"Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!" said Maxime deCliche. "I'm very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friendof yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself thesatisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won'tforget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!"

M. De Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused somepowerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined tobe strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away andshe felt heroic. "If you mean Mr. Flack--I don't know what you mean, "she said as composedly as possible to M. De Cliche. "Mr. Flack has goneto London. "

At this M. De Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied:"Ah it's easy to go to London. "

"They like such things there; they do them more and more. It's as bad asAmerica!" Mme. De Cliche declared. 

"Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You mightexplain--I'm only an American girl!" said Francie, whose being only anAmerican girl didn't prevent her pretty head from holding itself now ashigh as Mme. De Cliche's. 

Mme. De Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. "You're very nervous--you'd much better go home. I'll explain everythingto them--I'll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had ordersto wait. "

"I'm not in the least nervous, but I've made you all so, " Franciebrought out with the highest spirit. 

"I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you're only a wretchedvictim like ourselves, " M. De Brecourt remarked, approaching her witha smile. "I see the hand of a woman in it, you know, " he went on to theothers; "for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn't sinkto--he can't, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be thedernier des goujats. But please don't doubt that I've maintained thatwoman not to be you. "

"The way you talk! _I_ don't know how to write, " Francie impatientlyquavered. 

"My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!" murmured Mme. De Brecourtwith an arm round her. 

"There's a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so, " the girlcontinued. "She's a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes whathe tells her. I think her name's Miss Topping, but she calls herselfFlorine--or Dorine, " Francie added. 

"Miss Dosson, you're too rare!" Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving along moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. "Then you've beenthree to it, " she went on; "that accounts for its perfection!"

Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. De Brecourt and went to Mr. Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. "Mr. Probert, I'm very sorry for what I've done to distress you; I had noidea you'd all feel so badly. I didn't mean any harm. I thought you'dlike it. "

The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without takingher hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. Hedidn't look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulatesound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when shesaid she thought they'd like it; and indeed poor Francie was far frombeing able to measure the droll effect of that speech. "Like it--LIKEIT?" said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her. 

"What do you mean? She admits--she admits!" Mme. De Cliche exulted toher sister. "Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish mefor having tried to separate you?" she pursued to the poor child, whostood gazing up piteously at the old man. 

"I don't know what he has published--I haven't seen it--I don'tunderstand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me, " she said tohim. 

"'About me'!" M. De Cliche repeated in English. "Elle est divine!" Heturned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall. 

Mme. De Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled ittogether, saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it homeimmediately--then she'd see. She only seemed to wish to get her out ofthe room. But Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with hissick stare. "You gave information for that? You desired it?"

"Why _I_ didn't desire it--but Mr. Flack did. "

"Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?" the old mangroaned. 

"I thought he'd just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. Waterlow, " Francie went on. "I thought he'd just speak about my beingengaged and give a little account; so many people in America would beinterested. "

"So many people in America--that's just the dreadful thought, my dear, "said Mme. De Brecourt kindly. "Foyons, put it in your muff and tellus what you think of it. " And she continued to thrust forward thescandalous journal. 

But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probertat the others. "I told Gaston I'd certainly do something you wouldn'tlike. "

"Well, he'll believe it now!" cried Mme. De Cliche. 

"My poor child, do you think he'll like it any better?" asked Mme. DeBrecourt. 

Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of newwonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. "He'll see it overthere--he has seen it now. "

"Oh my dear, you'll have news of him. Don't be afraid!" broke in highderision from Mme. De Cliche. 

"Did HE send you the paper?" her young friend went on to Mr. Probert. 

"It was not directed in his hand, " M. De Brecourt pronounced. "There wassome stamp on the band--it came from the office. "

"Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that, " Mme. DeBrecourt suggested. 

"Or perhaps Florine, " M. De Cliche interposed. "I should like to gethold of Florine!"

"I DID--I did tell him so!" Francie repeated with all her feveredcandour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as ifshe thought the circumstance detracted from the offence. 

"So did I--so did we all!" said Mme. De Cliche. 

"And will he suffer--as you suffer?" Francie continued, appealing to Mr. Probert. 

"Suffer, suffer? He'll die!" cried the old man. "However, I won't answerfor him; he'll tell you himself, when he returns. "

"He'll die?" echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomimewho has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too muchgunpowder. 

"He'll never return--how can he show himself?" said Mme. De Cliche. 

"That's not true--he'll come back to stand by me!" the girl flashed out. 

"How couldn't you feel us to be the last--the very last?" asked Mr. Probert with great gentleness. "How couldn't you feel my poor son to bethe last--?"

"C'est un sens qui lui manque!" shrilled implacably Mme. De Cliche. 

"Let her go, papa--do let her go home, " Mme. De Brecourt pleaded. "Surely. That's the only place for her to-day, " the elder sistercontinued. 

"Yes, my child--you oughtn't to be here. It's your father--he ought tounderstand, " said Mr. Probert. 

"For God's sake don't send for him--let it all stop!" And Mme. De Clichemade wild gestures. 

Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, and then said: "Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan. "

"Give her your arm--take her to the carriage, " she heard Mme. DeBrecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knewhow--she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough tokiss her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feelingas she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would bebad because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn't complete that thought, yet only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. DeBrecourt hurried beside her; she wouldn't take his arm. But he openedthe door for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangestand most unexpected manner: "You're charming, mademoiselle--charming, charming!"

XII

Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salonat the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there togetheras if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, tocuriosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience;he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--heprofaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst intothe room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushedto one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into herface with a "Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?" Francie saidnothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do whatshe would with her. "She has been crying, poppa--she HAS, " Delia almostshouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as shecontinued. "Will you please tell? I've been perfectly wild! Yes youhave, you dreadful--!" the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested theirtroubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stoodwith his back to the fire. 

"Why, chicken, " said Mr. Dosson, "you look as if you had had quite aworry. "

"I told you I should--I told you, I told you!" Francie broke out with atrembling voice. "And now it's come!"

"You don't mean to say you've DONE anything?" cried Delia, very white. 

"It's all over, it's all over!" With which Francie's face braved denial. 

"Are you crazy, Francie?" Delia demanded. "I'm sure you look as if youwere. "

"Ain't you going to be married, childie?" asked Mr. Dosson allconsiderately, but coming nearer to her. 

Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw herarms round him. "Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me rightstraight away?"

"Of course I will, my precious. I'll take you anywhere. I don't wantanything--it wasn't MY idea!" And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at eachother while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder. 

"I never heard such trash--you can't behave that way! Has he got engagedto some one else--in America?" Delia threw out. 

"Why if it's over it's over. I guess it's all right, " said Mr. Dosson, kissing his younger daughter. "I'll go back or I'll go on. I'll goanywhere you like. "

"You won't have your daughters insulted, I presume!" Delia cried. "Ifyou don't tell me this moment what has happened, " she pursued to hersister, "I'll drive straight round there and make THEM. "

"HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?" asked the old man, bending over hischild, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound oftears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. "Did Iever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?"

"Oh well, if you've done it on purpose to triumph over me we might aswell go home, certainly. But I guess, " Delia added, "you had better justwait till Gaston comes. "

"It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do. "

"HAVE they insulted you--have they?" Mr. Dosson repeated while the smokeof his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting itwith placidity. 

"They think I've insulted THEM--they're in an awful state--they'realmost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, Idon't know what--and they think it's too wicked. They were all theretogether--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing theirteeth. I never saw people so affected. "

Delia's face grew big with her stare. "So affected?"

"Ah yes, I guess there's a good deal OF THAT, " said Mr. Dosson. 

"It's too real--too terrible; you don't understand. It's all printedthere--that they're immoral, and everything about them; everythingthat's private and dreadful, " Francie explained. 

"Immoral, is that so?" Mr. Dosson threw off. 

"And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sortsof personalities, and all the names, and Mme. De Villepreux, andeverything. It's all printed there and they've read it. It says one ofthem steals. "

"Will you be so good as to tell me what you're talking about?" Deliaenquired sternly. "Where is it printed and what have we got to do withit?"

"Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack. "

"Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!" Delia cried with passion. 

"Do they mind so what they see in the papers?" asked Mr. Dosson. "Iguess they haven't seen what I've seen. Why there used to be thingsabout ME--"

"Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it's the same asif I wrote it, " Francie ruefully mentioned. 

"Well, you know what you COULD do!" And Mr. Dosson beamed at her forcommon cheer. 

"Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about whenyou went with him again to see it?" Delia demanded. 

"Oh I don't know what piece it is; I haven't seen it. "

"Haven't seen it? Didn't they show it to you?"

"Yes, but I couldn't read it. Mme. De Brecourt wanted me to take it--butI left it behind. "

"Well, that's LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. I'll be bound I'd see it, " Delia declared. "Hasn't it come, doesn't italways come?"

"I guess we haven't had the last--unless it's somewhere round, " said Mr. Dosson. 

"Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!" Deliacontinued. "Francie, what DID you want to tell him?"

"I didn't know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so muchinterest, " Francie pleaded. 

"Oh he's a deep one!" groaned Delia. 

"Well, if folks are immoral you can't keep it out of the papers--and Idon't know as you ought to want to, " Mr. Dosson remarked. "If they AREI'm glad to know it, lovey. " And he gave his younger daughter a glanceapparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do. 

But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had beenarrested. "How do you mean--'a deep one'?"

"Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!"

Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottledas with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. "To breakoff my engagement?"

"Yes, just that. But I'll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allowthat?"

"Allow what?"

"Why Mr. Flack's vile interference. You won't let him do as he likeswith us, I suppose, will you?"

"It's all done--it's all done!" said Francie. The tears had suddenlystarted into her eyes again. 

"Well, he's so smart that it IS likely he's too smart, " her fatherallowed. "But what did they want you to do about it?--that's what _I_want to know?"

"They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn't. "

"But you didn't and you don't--if you haven't even read it!" Deliaalmost yelled. 

"Where IS the d---d thing?" their companion asked, looking helplesslyabout him. 

"On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. Thatold woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do goand get it--DO!" And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him. 

"I knew he wanted to print something and I can't say I didn't!" Franciesaid. "I thought he'd crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow wouldlike that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about thepaper--he's always doing that and always was--and I didn't see the harm. But even just knowing him--they think that's vile. "

"Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!"--and Delia bouncedfairly round as from the force of her high spirit. 

Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. "Why hekept us alive last year, " he uttered in tribute. 

"Well, he seems to have killed us now, " Delia cried. 

"Well, don't give up an old friend, " her father urged with his hand onthe door. "And don't back down on anything you've done. "

"Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!" Delia went on in herexasperation. "It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn't they eversee a society-paper before?"

"They can't have seen much, " said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with hishand on the door. "Don't you worry--Gaston will make it all right. "

"Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!"

"Is that what they say?" Delia demanded. 

"Gaston will never look at me again. "

"Well then he'll have to look at ME, " said Mr. Dosson. 

"Do you mean that he'll give you up--he'll be so CRAWLING?" Delia wenton. 

"They say he's just the one who'll feel it most. But I'm the one whodoes that, " said Francie with a strange smile. 

"They're stuffing you with lies--because THEY don't like it. He'll betender and true, " Delia glared. 

"When THEY hate me?--Never!" And Francie shook her head slowly, stillwith her smile of softness. "That's what he cared for most--to make themlike me. "

"And isn't he a gentleman, I should like to know?" asked Delia. 

"Yes, and that's why I won't marry him--if I've injured him. "

"Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes, " Mr. Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room. 

The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. "Well, he has got to fix it--that's one thing I can tell you. "

"Who has got to fix it?"

"Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece sayingit's all false or all a mistake. "

"Yes, you'd better make him, " said Francie with a weak laugh. "You'dbetter go after him--down to Nice. "

"You don't mean to say he's gone down to Nice?"

"Didn't he say he was going there as soon as he came back fromLondon--going right through without stopping?"

"I don't know but he did, " said Delia. Then she added: "The meancoward!"

"Why do you say that? He can't hide at Nice--they can find him there. "

"Are they going after him?"

"They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don't know what--those men. "

"Well, I wish they would, " said Delia. 

"They'd better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him, "Francie went on. 

"How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!" hersister engaged. 

Francie had a pause. "I can protect him without speaking to him. I cantell the simple truth--that he didn't print a word but what I told him. "

"I'd like to see him not!" Delia fairly hooted. "When did he grow soparticular? He fixed it up, " she said with assurance. "They always doin the papers--they'd be ashamed if they didn't. Well now he has got tobring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that'swhat he has got to do!" she wound up with decision. 

"Praising them up? They'll hate that worse, " Francie returned musingly. 

Delia stared. "What on earth then do they want?"

Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. Shegave no reply to this question but presently said: "We had better goto-morrow, the first hour that's possible. "

"Go where? Do you mean to Nice?"

"I don't care where. Anywhere to get away. "

"Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?"

"I don't want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at mejust now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don't feellike that--I can never see him again. "

"I don't suppose YOU'RE crazy, are you?" Delia returned. 

"I can't tell him it wasn't me--I can't, I can't!" her companion wenton. 

Delia planted herself in front of her. "Francie Dosson, if you're goingto tell him you've done anything wrong you might as well stop before youbegin. Didn't you hear how poppa put it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, " Francie said listlessly. 

"'Don't give up an old friend--there's nothing on earth so mean. ' Nowisn't Gaston Probert an old friend?"

"It will be very simple--he'll give me up. "

"Then he'll be worse than a worm. "

"Not in the least--he'll give me up as he took me. He'd never have askedme to marry him if he hadn't been able to get THEM to accept me: hethinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he'll do justthe same. He'll have to choose between us, and when it comes to thathe'll never choose me. "

"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean--if you're goingto identify yourself so with HIM!"

"Oh I wish he'd never been born!" Francie wailed; after which shesuddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was goingto bed, and her sister took her off to her room. 

Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter's bedside, read the dreadful "piece" out to both his children from the copy of theReverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable factthat as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, inwhich their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, theirresentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their flutteringeffort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, andtheir acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as anatural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty, " highly calculated toplease, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concernedMr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren't aware over here of the chargesbrought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If therewas anything in that style they might talk, " he said; and he scannedthe effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it someimputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance withthe text was to depress Delia, who didn't exactly see what there was init to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were somepoints they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalousplaces--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why shouldthey have minded if other people didn't understand the allusions (thesewere peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did?The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid thanMme. De Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situationand her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject thanit easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy, " and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too muchabout him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot ofthings SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had:perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine orDorine--the one she had mentioned at Mme. De Brecourt's. 

All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, atthe hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much lessthan was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of theProberts, this didn't diminish the girl's sense of responsibilitynor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive andfastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty theywould come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexionas she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feelingthis to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurdheroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got "case-hardened"Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad thingsthat they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said todo who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague andpassive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bedand with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, shethought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in thepapers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, aconvulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls'engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibilityor of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crimenor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate theirblame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on thishead as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them onsuch a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to showthat for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained werea part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshnessof the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars atnight or the wind and the weather at all times. 

The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was theapprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fearof what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. Probert's or to Mme. De Brecourt's and reprimand them for having madethings so rough to his "chicken. " It was true she had scarcely ever seenhim reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing likethis had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made eachother cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no onehad ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense thatthose other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, ofsuperiority, in any discussion, which he couldn't command. She wantednothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickeringsilence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise andthey made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to seeGaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that shemight just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps thesethings wouldn't make it better--very likely they wouldn't; but at anyrate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her partand her father's and Delia's, to make it worse. She told her father thatshe wouldn't, as Delia put it, "want to have him" go round, and was insome degree relieved at perceiving that he didn't seem very clear asto what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn'tafraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that hadhappened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of theabsence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, forhe had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in thepaper. 

Delia also reassured her; she said she'd see to it that poppa didn'tsneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn't the smallestdoubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM downthere--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorryhe had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for herand the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anythingpractical to say they'd arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had thesense of his daughter's having been roughly handled he derived some ofthe consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of theProberts as a "body. " If they were consistent with their character orwith their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and hehung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimatedto her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, inthe red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn't exhilaratethis young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knewalmost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentimentof Gaston's horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her oncethat he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would havebecome familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at presentstrange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they wouldonly prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgustwould be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete herknowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time. She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up thebusiness, close the incident, and all would be over. 

He didn't write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two orthree mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in NewYork and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia tosay that of course he didn't write when he was on the ocean: how couldthey get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--beforehe sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. Theywere ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see theircorrespondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came toFrancie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack's handand with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and threeintense pages from Mme. De Brecourt, received forty-eight hours afterthe scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows:

MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we've talked it overconscientiously and it appears to us that we've no right to take anysuch step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn't exclusively ours butbelongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him inas simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, wehad better not touch it (it's so delicate, isn't it, my poor child?) butleave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writingyou these simple lines, and that once your participation has beenconstatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene)EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believedin you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite ofthe thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you withtenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent butdisastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already--the horribleRepublican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of theunspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: thatis such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes andsous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suitfor defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantlyand Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect themday after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, forthey almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We havedetermined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure tobe his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it's best to leaveMr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one's hands off him. Have youanything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? Butit's foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answerthis. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, mydear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that youmay never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNEDE BRECOURT. 

Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn't understand it, andkept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her poreover the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers ofAmerican travellers. They knew of Gaston's arrival by his telegraphingfrom Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned thehour--"about dinner-time"--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, afterdinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should beleft alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry roundin the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preferencewhatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia's masterlyones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty aboutimposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when theyreturned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only longenough to say "I told you so!" with a white face and march off to herroom with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn't getat her that night. It was another of Delia's inspirations not to try, after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exerciseof a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept nowink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o'clock, she hadthe energy to drag her father out to the banker's and to keep him outtwo hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn't turn upbefore dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o'clock he came in andfound Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was verypale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for aninstant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flickerin her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnaturalmeeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening;they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till threeo'clock this morning. " He looked as if he had been through terriblethings, and it wasn't simply the strain of his attention to so muchbusiness in America. What passed next she couldn't remember afterwards;it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding herhand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--"Is ittrue, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told thatblackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter's only a report ofYOUR talk?"

"I told him everything--it's all me, ME, ME!" the girl repliedexaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he mightmean. 

Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to thewindow and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. Atlast the young man went on: "And I who insisted to them that there wasno natural delicacy like yours!"

"Well, you'll never need to insist about anything any more!" she cried. And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Deliaand Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was againlocked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance. 

XIII

Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, looselycontemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that sideof his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of hisdaughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of hismeditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, though its consequences presently became definite enough. While hewaited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that theyfailed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to askDelia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to hisdaughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready fromthe first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of theyoung journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was adifference however in the course of action which she judged this view todemand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the messhe had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain thesatisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes thesense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to betouched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the rightgrand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which shecharacterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if thatcan be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking whileshe poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. The same cause will according to application produce effects withoutsameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Deliaexpress freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end ofMr. Flack's nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The bestbalm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociablytravel over his young friend's whole person; this would have been todeal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms hecould understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further thegirl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being ableto motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but anindefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on herdeepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of theReverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into suchtrouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom againin the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of astrained interpretation, but that didn't prevent Delia from placingit before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that heshould remark in return that he didn't see what good it could do Mr. Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should bedisgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way ofreasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, thoughshe couldn't explain--and at any rate she didn't want the manoeuvringcreature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to knowthere had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, thatany one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he publishedor didn't publish; above all she didn't want him to know that theProberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have hadsuch effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part wasthe oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of whatMr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a positionto know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. Shehoped that some of the people who used only to call when they were "offto-morrow" would take the lesson to heart. 

While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentmentfor which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words byletter to their young friend in the south. This communication was notof a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociabilitywhich was the essence of the good gentleman's nature. He wanted to seeMr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him toan account would play but a small part in the interview. It commendeditself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should bea sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his ownmatch it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn outan attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person withwhom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him inpresence of a new problem, and somehow it didn't seem to Mr. Dosson todisqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had beenthe fountain of injury. The injury wouldn't be there if the Probertsdidn't point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn'tturn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many ofhis cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomelyto spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was abond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nicewas the little jerk. 

The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston'ssight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, to see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--shereceived by the first post a letter from him, written the eveningbefore. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day shouldhave been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that shedidn't consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, thatSHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent tothe indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There wereexplanations, assurances, de part et d'autre, with which it wasmanifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He wouldtherefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting inpatience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn't propose an earliermoment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband hadjust arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two ofthe French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the mostperfidious extracts. His father hadn't stirred out of the house, hadn'tput his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maximewere immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. Theycouldn't face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossiblefor him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she hadappeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtuallyconfirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up tothat time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in themeantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her havingcaused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in hisaffection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon. 

A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on oneof the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon itin her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certainmorsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, andher attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. Theweather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to hauntthe court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he waspresumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needleand was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectlystill for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which sheheard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the otherof the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised byhis visit. 

"I saw your father downstairs--he says it's all right, " said thejournalist, advancing with a brave grin. "He told me to come straightup--I had quite a talk with him. "

"All right--ALL RIGHT?" Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. "Yesindeed--I should say so!" Then she checked herself, asking in anothermanner: "Is that so? poppa sent you up?" And then in still another:"Well, have you had a good time at Nice?"

"You'd better all come right down and see. It's lovely down there. Ifyou'll come down I'll go right back. I guess you want a change, " Mr. Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showedshe had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raisedherself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with hisconscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowingthan ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetratingpoints. "Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear ofanything so cheap?"

"All about what?--all about what?" said Delia, whose attempt torepresent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed inappearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flackto possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them hadasked the young man to sit down. "I thought you were going to stay amonth at Nice?" Delia continued. 

"Well, I was, but your father's letter started me up. "

"Father's letter?"

"He wrote me about the row--didn't you know it? Then I broke. You didn'tsuppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times uphere. "

"Gracious!" Delia panted. 

"Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn't it very hot now?" Francierather limply asked. 

"Oh it's all right. But I haven't come up here to crow about Nice, haveI?"

"Why not, if we want you to?"--Delia spoke up. 

Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of theeyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: "Anything YOU like, Miss Francie. With you one subject's as good as another. Can't we sitdown? Can't we be comfortable?" he added. 

"Comfortable? of course we can!" cried Delia, but she remained erectwhile Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion tookpossession of the nearest chair. 

"Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have theplums?" George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl. 

She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he hadtold her; and then said, more remotely, "DID father write to you?"

"Of course he did. That's why I'm here. "

"Poor father, sometimes he doesn't know WHAT to do!" Delia threw in withviolence. 

"He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that formyself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing willgo the rounds, you'll see. What brought me was learning from him thatthey HAVE got their backs up. "

"What on earth are you talking about?" Delia Dosson rang out. 

Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before;Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. "What game areyou trying, Miss Delia? It ain't true YOU care what I wrote, is it?" hepursued, addressing himself again to Francie. 

After a moment she raised her eyes. "Did you write it yourself?"

"What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?" Delia againinterposed. 

"It has done the paper more good than anything--every one's sointerested, " said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. "Andyou don't feel you've anything to complain of, do you?" he added toFrancie kindly. 

"Do you mean because I told you?"

"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and thatwalk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait?Didn't you understand that I wanted you to know that the public wouldappreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and aboutyou as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member ofthe grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie, "Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, "you regularly TALKED as if you did. "

"Did I talk a great deal?" asked Francie. 

"Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don'tyou remember when we sat there in the Bois?"

"Oh rubbish!" Delia panted. 

"Yes, and Mme. De Cliche passed. "

"And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh, " he remindedher--"it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, andI knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she's scandalisednow--she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at lastin a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it's a biggerpose than ever, and, as I said just now, it's too damned cheap. It'sTHIN--that's what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn't count. Theypretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of factthey like it first-rate. "

"Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn't thatdead and buried days and days ago?" Delia quavered afresh. She hoveredthere in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that herfather had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost asa treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and anuncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming;and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk theresponsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with hisaccomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Didhe want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt thecommonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of theirquestions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't beenafraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happenedyet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leavingthem together she would have darted down to the court to appease herconjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularlypleased she should be if he wouldn't put in his oar. She felt liberated, however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as asure proof of the state of her sister's spirit. 

"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what yourfather has told me?" Mr. Flack enquired. "I don't mean it was he gave methe tip; I guess I've seen enough over here by this time to have workedit out. They're scandalised all right--they're blue with horror and havenever heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie, " her visitor roared, "that ain't good enough for you and me. They know what's in the papersevery day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain't likethe fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn't think how theapples got into the dumplings. They're just grabbing a pretext to breakbecause--because, well, they don't think you're blue blood. They'redelighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they're all cacklingover the egg it has taken so many hens of 'em to lay. That's MYdiagnosis if you want to know. "

"Oh--how can you say such a thing?" Francie returned with a tremorin her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia's at the samemoment, and this young woman's heart bounded with the sense that she wassafe. Mr. Flack's power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dossonhad crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as anuntutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed toher that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in hereyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit. 

"What does it matter what he says, my dear?" she interposed. "Do makehim drop the subject--he's talking very wild. I'm going down to see whatpoppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!" At the door she pauseda moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: "Now just wipe him out, mind!" It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar thatday, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she couldremember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirtedout. 

As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. "Now lookhere, you're not going back on me, are you?"

"Going back on you--what do you mean?"

"Ain't we together in this thing? WHY sure! We're CLOSE together, MissFrancie!"

"Together--together?" Francie repeated with charming wan but not at alltender eyes on him. 

"Don't you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my coursealways is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I statedto you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry publicbehind me. "

"Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so. I never denied it, " Francie brought forth. 

"You told them so?"

"When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I toldthem I gave you the tip as you call it. "

She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words;then he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. "Ah you're toosweet!" She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; buthe, rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it wasdisagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a littlebefore him. "They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make youbelieve you had outraged them?"

"All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don't like it, " she said ather distance. 

"The cowards!" George Flack after a moment remarked. "And where wasyoung Mr. Probert?" he then demanded. 

"He was away--I've told you--in America. "

"Ah yes, your father told me. But now he's back doesn't he like iteither?"

"I don't know, Mr. Flack, " Francie answered with impatience. 

"Well I do then. He's a coward too--he'll do what his poppa tells him, and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law fromwhom he takes lessons: he'll just back down, he'll give you up. "

"I can't talk with you about that, " said Francie. 

"Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together?You can't alter that, " her visitor insisted. "It was too lovely yourstanding up for me--your not denying me!"

"You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different, "she freely contended. 

"Everything IS different when it's printed. What else would be thegood of the papers? Besides, it wasn't I; it was a lady who helps mehere--you've heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much toknow you--she wants to talk with you. "

"And will she publish THAT?" Francie asked with unstudied effect. 

Mr. Flack stared a moment. "Lord, how they've worked on you! And do YOUthink it's bad?"

"Do I think what's bad?"

"Why the letter we're talking about. "

"Well--I didn't see the point of so much. "

He waited a little, interestedly. "Do you think I took any advantage?"

She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he hadnever heard from her: "Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask mesuch questions?"

He hesitated; after which he broke out: "Because I love you. Don't youknow that?"

"Oh PLEASE don't!" she almost moaned, turning away. 

But he was launched now and he let himself go. "Why won't you understandit--why won't you understand the rest? Don't you see how it has workedround--the heartless brutes they've turned into, and the way OUR life, yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don't you see the damnedsneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to doanything in the world for you?"

Francie's white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a signof satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: "Why did youask me so many questions that day?"

"Because I always ask questions--it's my nature and my business to askthem. Haven't you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could?Don't you know they're the very foundation of my work? I thought yousympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did. "

"Well, I did, " she allowed. 

"You put it in the dead past, I see. You don't then any more?"

If this remark was on her visitor's part the sign of a rare assurancethe girl's cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, sheeven smiled; then she replied: "Oh yes I do--only not so much. "

"They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they'd havedisgusted you. I don't care--even a little sympathy will do: whateveryou've got left. " He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she hadnothing for; so he went on: "There was no obligation for you to answermy questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word. "

"Really?" she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. "Ithought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful. "

"Ungrateful?"

"Why to you--after what you had done. Don't you remember that it was youwho introduced us--?" And she paused with a fatigued delicacy. 

"Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I begyour pardon--I haven't THAT on my conscience!" Mr. Flack quite grandlydeclared. 

"Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--tohis friends, " she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for theinexactness caused by her magnanimity. "That's why I thought I ought totell you what you'd like. "

"Why, do you suppose if I'd known where that first visit of ours toWaterlow was going to bring you out I'd have taken you within fiftymiles--?" He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: "Jerusalem, there'sno one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?"

"Never mind what I told them. "

"Miss Francie, " said George Flack, "if you'll marry me I'll never ask aquestion again. I'll go into some other business. "

"Then you didn't do it on purpose?" Francie asked. 

"On purpose?"

"To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again. "

"Well, of all the blamed ideas--!" the young man gasped. "YOUR pure mindnever gave birth to that--it was your sister's. "

"Wasn't it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you'dnever consciously have been the means--"

"Ah but I WAS the means!" Mr. Flack interrupted. "We must go, after all, by what DID happen. "

"Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialismgenerally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was nonethe less deeply serious--serious even to pain. 

"We're square?" he repeated. 

"I don't think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye. "

"Good-bye? Never!" cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to adegree that spoke strangely of his hopes. 

Something in the way she repeated her "Goodbye!" betrayed her impressionof this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left herunflattered. "Do go away!" she broke out. 

"Well, I'll come back very soon"--and he took up his hat. 

"Please don't--I don't like it. " She had now contrived to put a widespace between them. 

"Oh you tormentress!" he groaned. He went toward the door, but before hereached it turned round. 

"Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--afterthis?"

"Do you want to put that in the paper?"

"Of course I do--and say you said it!" Mr. Flack held up his head. 

They stood looking at each other across the large room. "Well then--Iain't. There!"

"That's all right, " he said as he went out. 

XIV

When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson andDelia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latterthat she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed hersister that as their friend would have, first of all, information togive their father about the business he had transacted in America hewouldn't care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported thisspeech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn't in anyhurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whetherMr. Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gastonmight have liked it, but he didn't look as if he had had a very goodtime. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to himthat if she hadn't received his assurance to the contrary she would havebelieved he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sickat sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that therewas nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung overtheir relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitudeon this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him inthe morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn'tlikely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeedwiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that hemustn't speak of the "piece in the paper" unless young Probert shouldspeak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she beganby asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sendingMr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way theyfelt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he hadsimply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life. 

"Well, hanged if I understand!" poor Mr. Dosson had said. "I thought youliked the piece--you think it's so queer THEY don't like it. " "They, " inthe parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Probertsin congress assembled. 

"I don't think anything's queer but you!" Delia had retorted; and shehad let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of"handling" Mr. Flack. 

"Is that so?" the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that madehim wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of somany Parisian hours. 

Francie's visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through thecourt and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had beengoing to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure deepened Mr. Dosson's dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be saidto have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him apersonal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smokedwith Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. Thishaughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publicationof details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson's naturewas the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to beashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and that if they hadn'tdone them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people'sknowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, stillin the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "Hesays that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason thatif you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you wantthe people with you, you've got to be with the people. "

"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think theProberts are with us much. "

"Oh he doesn't mean them, " said Mr. Dosson. 

"Well, I do!" cried Delia. 

At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gastoninsisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn't say that hemight never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that thisidea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctlycold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an houruttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particularoccasion for that when he talked about "preferred bonds" with herfather. This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she hadheard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dossonpushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that heguessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attachbut little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude whichDelia perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Deliaunderstood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew agreat deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he hadcommitted to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlementsan eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestichabits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifoggingprovinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooledoff he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered themservices in America; but now her father, for the moment at least, scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incidentthat left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. WhatMr. Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there, especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and thehotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction intwo or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was inrelation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, asthe girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciativeexpression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a mostextraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he hadhad any conception of. "Of course I didn't like EVERYTHING, " he said, "any more than I like everything anywhere. "

"Well, what didn't you like?" Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after ashort silence. 

Gaston Probert made his choice. "Well, the light for instance. "

"The light--the electric?"

"No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratchingof a slate-pencil. " As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as ifthe reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which hehad not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying awaytoo long, Gaston immediately added: "I really think Francie might comein. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her. "

"I'll go and call her--I'll make her come, " said Delia at the door. Sheleft her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. Munster, Mr. Dosson's former partner, to whom he had taken a letterand who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased atthis; nevertheless he broke out suddenly:

"Look here, you know; if you've got anything to say that you don't thinkvery acceptable you had better say it to ME. " Gaston changed colour, buthis reply was checked by Delia's quick return. She brought the newsthat her sister would be obliged if he would go into the littledining-room--he would find her there. She had something for his ear thatshe could mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there wasa lamp and a fire. "Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!" Mr. Dosson, at this, commented with a laugh. "What does she want to say tohim?" he asked when Gaston had passed out. 

"Gracious knows! She won't tell me. But it's too flat, at his age, tolive in such terror. "

"In such terror?"

"Why of your father. You've got to choose. "

"How, to choose?"

"Why if there's a person you like and he doesn't like. "

"You mean you can't choose your father, " said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully. 

"Of course you can't. "

"Well then please don't like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him, "he added, faithful to his easier philosophy. 

"I guess you'd have to, " said Delia. 

In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standingby the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began. 

"You can't say I didn't tell you I should do something. I did nothingelse from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again andagain. You knew what to expect. "

"Ah don't say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!" theyoung man groaned. "You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carryout your absurd threat. "

"Well, what does it matter when it's all over?"

"It's not all over. Would to God it were!"

The girl stared. "Don't you know what I sent for you to come in herefor? To bid you good-bye. "

He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then "Francie, what on earth has got into you?" he broke out. "What deviltry, whatpoison?" It would have been strange and sad to an observer, theopposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant forconfidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wandefiance that hardened their faces. 

"Don't they despise me--don't they hate me? You do yourself! Certainlyyou'll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troublesimpossible to you. "

"I don't understand; it's like some hideous dream!" Gaston Probertcried. "You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you makeit worse by your talk. I don't believe it--I don't believe a word ofit. "

"What don't you believe?" she asked. 

"That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you'll take thatback (it's too monstrous!) if you'll deny it and give me your assurancethat you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still bearranged. "

"Do you want me to lie?" asked Francie Dosson. "I thought you'd likepleasant words. "

"Oh Francie, Francie!" moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes. 

"What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?" she went on. 

"Why they'll accept it; they'll ask for nothing more. It's yourparticipation they can't forgive. "

"THEY can't? Why do you talk to me of 'them'? I'm not engaged to'them'!" she said with a shrill little laugh. 

"Oh Francie _I_ am! And it's they who are buried beneath that filthyrubbish!"

She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack's epistle, butreturned as with more gravity: "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed. Butevidently I'm not delicate. "

He looked at her, helpless and bitter. "It's not the newspapers in yourcountry that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! Andthe ladies have them on their tables. "

"You told me we couldn't here--that the Paris ones are too bad, " saidFrancie. 

"Bad they are, God knows; but they've never published anything likethat--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people whoonly want to be left alone. "

Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to standlonger, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked upat him. "Was it there you saw it?"

He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the oddreflexion that she had never "realised" he had such fine lovely upliftedeyebrows. "Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the momentI got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. Iopened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floorand spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill. "

"Did you think it was me?" she patiently gaped. 

"About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, too tormented. "

"Then why didn't you write to me, if you didn't think it was me?"

"Write to you? I wrote to you every three days, " he cried. 

"Not after that. "

"Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might beDelia, " Gaston added in a moment. 

"Oh she didn't want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I toldhim. She tried to prevent me, " Francie insisted. 

"Would to God then she had!" he wailed. 

"Haven't you told them she's delicate too?" she asked in her strangetone. 

He made no answer to this; he only continued: "What power, in heaven'sname, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?"

"He's a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first inParis. "

"But, my dearest child, what 'gaieties, ' what friends--what a man toknow!"

"If we hadn't known him we shouldn't have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow's. "

"Oh you'd have come some other way, " said Gaston, who made nothing ofthat. 

"Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us ineverything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when heasked me. I liked him for what he had done. "

Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. "I see. It was a kind of delicacy. "

"Oh a 'kind'!" She desperately smiled. 

He remained a little with his eyes on her face. "Was it for me?"

"Of course it was for you. "

"Ah how strange you are!" he cried with tenderness. "Suchcontradictions--on s'y perd. I wish you'd say that to THEM, that way. Everything would be right. "

"Never, never!" said the girl. "I've wronged them, and nothing will everbe the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathethe person who should have done such a thing. It doesn't seem to meso bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back tothem. You know best, " she repeated. 

"They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. Thesense of desecration, of pollution, you see"--he explained as if forconscience. 

"Oh you needn't tell me--I saw them all there!" she answered. 

"It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN'T brave them, didyou?"

"Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea's incredible!"she then hopelessly sighed. 

But he wouldn't have this. "No, no--I can imagine cases. " He clearly hadSOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it. 

"But this isn't a case, hey?" she demanded. "Well then go back tothem--go back, " she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across thetable to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, pushed her chair back, springing up. "You know you didn't come here totell me you're ready to give them up. "

"To give them up?" He only echoed it with all his woe at first. "I'vebeen battling with them till I'm ready to drop. You don't know how theyfeel--how they MUST feel. "

"Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour. "

"It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful, " said GastonProbert. 

"I don't care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice. "

"Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I'll manageit. I only wish they hadn't seen you there in the Bois. "

"In the Bois?"

"That Marguerite hadn't seen you--with that lying blackguard. That's theimage they can't get over. "

Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself mostprepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. "I see you can'teither, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That's all Ican say. You must take me as I am, " said Francie Dosson. 

"Don't--don't; you infuriate me!" he pleaded, frowning. 

She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. "Ofcourse I do, and I shall do it again. We're too terribly different. Everything makes you so. You CAN'T give them up--ever, ever. Good-bye--good-bye! That's all I wanted to tell you. "

"I'll go and throttle him!" the young man almost howled. 

"Very well, go! Good-bye. " She had stepped quickly to the door and hadalready opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time. 

"Francie, Francie!" he supplicated, following her into the passage. Thedoor was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with theother apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard herpush a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. Dosson and Delia. 

"Why he acts just like Mr. Flack, " said the old man when they discoveredthat the interview in the dining-room had come to an end. 

The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenuede Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himselfto breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artistusually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previousseparation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gastonwalked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood beforehis easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but thiseasy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling theoccasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youththan the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow's compassionwas slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled aboveall, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question ofhis poor friend's character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out intopassionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed aboutcontinually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he couldtake neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companionmore than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner;he had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need forsympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would havebuttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward andcapable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of adrama; whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous andgraceful--natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true youngAnglo-Saxon wouldn't have known the particular acuteness of such aquandary, for he wouldn't have parted to such an extent with his freedomof spirit. It was the fact of this surrender on his visitor's part thatexcited Waterlow's secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, butto see it triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice madehim feel he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. He now measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston'snature. To act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up theroot, even if the operation should be terribly painful, should beattended with cries and tears and contortions, with baffling scruplesand a sense of sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against hisown flesh and blood. Now and again he broke out: "And if you should seeher as she looks just now--she's too lovely, too touching!--you'd seehow right I was originally, when I found her such a revelation of thatrare type, the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about. "But he reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression heseemed unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purposeand malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, ofall people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, heverily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. WhenWaterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he couldonly answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would;it was his father's influence and example, his very genius, the worshipof privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities andprofanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and ratherwearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desiredhe should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girlover--was that the issue?

"Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She madea mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It's whetherit strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over. "

"It depends upon the sense you attach to justification. "

"I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power tomake me so?"

"To try--certainly, if they're capable of anything so nasty. The onlyfair play for them is to let you alone, " Waterlow wound up. 

"Ah, they won't do that--they like me too much!" Gaston ingenuouslycried. 

"It's an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be tolet you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, are involved. "

"Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel sherepresents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, suchpossibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it's upon THEM--Imean on those things--my happiness would be shattered. "

"Well, " the elder man rather dryly said, "if you yourself have nosecrets for persuading them of the contrary I'm afraid I can't teach youone. "

"Yes, I ought to do it myself, " Gaston allowed in the candour of hismeditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: "They neverbelieved in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite aboutit. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do sobecause I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that's what I did, heaven help me!and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displeasethem. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!"

"That was your folly, " Waterlow remarked, painting away. 

"My folly--to turn my back?"

"No, no--to guarantee. "

"My dear fellow, wouldn't you?"--and Gaston stared. 

"Never in the world. "

"You'd have thought her capable--?"

"Capabilissima! And I shouldn't have cared. "

"Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new waythat's as bad?"

"I shouldn't care if she was. That's the least of all questions. "

"The least?"

"Ah don't you see, wretched youth, " cried the artist, pausing fromhis work and looking up--"don't you see that the question of herpossibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She's thesweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be Ishould still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation. "

Gaston kept echoing. "In self-preservation?"

"To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That's amuch more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They'redoing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable ofindividual life. "

Gaston was immensely struck. "They are--they are!" he declared withenthusiasm. 

"Well then, if you believe it, for heaven's sake go and marry herto-morrow!" Waterlow threw down his implements and added: "And come outof this--into the air. "

Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. "And ifshe goes again and does the very same?"

"The very same--?" Waterlow thought. 

"I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear. "

"Well, " said Waterlow, "you'll at least have got rid of your family. "

"Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they're not there! They'reright, pourtant, they're right, " Gaston went on, passing out of thestudio with his friend. 

"They're right?"

"It was unimaginable that she should. "

"Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence takingyou off your guard to give you your chance. " This was ingenious, but, though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie's lover--iflover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if hemistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook himhowever was his companion's saying to him in the vestibule, when theyhad taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out:"Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see thatshe's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she'sa perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have anapprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from arose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing youyourself have the wit to conceive?"

"Ah my dear friend!"--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions, panted for gratitude. 

"The limit will be yours, not hers, " Waterlow added. 

"No, no, I've done with limits, " his friend ecstatically cried. 

That evening at ten o'clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel del'Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introducehim into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson's apartments and then goand tell Miss Francina he awaited her there. 

"Oh you'll be better there than in the zalon--they've villed it withtheir luccatch, " said the man, who always addressed him in an intentionof English and wasn't ignorant of the tie that united the visitor tothe amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it hadlately undergone. 

"With their luggage?"

"They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don't think they themselves knowfor where, sir. "

"Please then say to Miss Francina that I've called on the most urgentbusiness and am extraordinarily pressed. "

The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to theorder of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which thewaiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is betterexplained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into hishand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gastonhad ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little bystopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how helooked as if he had been crying. 

"I've chosen--I've chosen, " he said expressively, smiling at her indenial of these indications. 

"You've chosen?"

"I've had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to giveYOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it wasworth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that waytoo. "

"Ah I'm not worth it. You give up too much!" Francie returned. "We'regoing away--it's all over. " She averted herself quickly, as if to carryout her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--heldher fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sisterbroke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion. 

"Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!" Delia exclaimed. 

"You must take me with you if you're going away, Mr. Dosson, " Gastonsaid. "I'll start whenever you like. "

"All right--where shall we go?" that amiable man asked. 

"Hadn't you decided that?"

"Well, the girls said they'd tell me. "

"We were going home, " Francie brought out. 

"No we weren't--not a wee mite!" Delia professed. 

"Oh not THERE" Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie. 

"Well, when you've fixed it you can take the tickets, " Mr. Dossonobserved with detachment. 

"To some place where there are no newspapers, darling, " Gaston went on. 

"I guess you'll have hard work to find one, " Mr. Dosson pursued. 

"Dear me, we needn't read them any more. We wouldn't have read thatone if your family hadn't forced us, " Delia said to her prospectivebrother-in-law. 

"Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look atone, " he very gravely declared. 

"You'll see, sir, --you'll have to!" Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted. 

"No, you'll tell us enough. "

Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now ratherunnaturally smiling. "Won't they forgive me ever?" she asked, lookingup. 

"Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in thatcase what good will their forgiveness do you?"

"Well, perhaps it's better to pay for it, " the girl went on. 

"To pay for it?"

"By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful, " she solemnly gloomilysaid. 

"Oh for all you'll suffer--!" Gaston protested, shining down on her. 

"It was for you--only for you, as I told you, " Francie returned. 

"Yes, don't tell me again--I don't like that explanation! I ought to letyou know that my father now declines to do anything for me, " the youngman added to Mr. Dosson. 

"To do anything for you?"

"To make me any allowance. "

"Well, that makes me feel better. We don't want your father's money, youknow, " this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness. 

"There'll be enough for all; especially if we economise innewspapers"--Delia carried it elegantly off. 

"Well, I don't know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing, " herfather as gaily returned. 

"Don't you be afraid he'll ever send it now!" she shouted in her returnof confidence. 

"I'm very sorry--because they were all lovely, " Francie went on toGaston with sad eyes. 

"Let us wait to say that till they come back to us, " he answeredsomewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whetherhis relatives were lovely or not. 

"I'm sure you won't have to wait long!" Delia remarked with the samecheerfulness. 

"'Till they come back'?" Mr. Dosson repeated. "Ah they can't come backnow, sir. We won't take them in!" The words fell from his lips with afine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentarysilence, and it is a sign of Gaston's complete emancipation that hedidn't in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied hisrace. The resentment was rather Delia's, but she kept it to herself, forshe was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of thehouse would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for theProberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister's marriagewas really to take place her consciousness that the American peoplewould have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. Theparty left the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but itappeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piecefrom the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not atall clear as to where they were going.