When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all that way—she lived over by the Invalides—to look at the portrait once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about it which had not occurred to the original and her companions—frequently as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a bewilderment to Mr. Probert.
Francie remembered now—she had forgotten it—Margaret de Cliche’s having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were—the papa and the grande soeur—the girl replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on a 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 the second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others behind it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow mightn’t have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big editor, 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 rest of the business—about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. 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 cause projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston would 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 to want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us.” Soon after this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were seated in the carriage again, at the door—they had come in Mr. Dosson’s open landau—her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:
“Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her parasol, looking about her, giving no order.
“Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady one 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 say good-morning to me?”
“She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round with me. She wanted to carry me off.”
“What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous calm.
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 right and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to 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 everything gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris anyway!” 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 anything about that.”
“Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?”
“Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like her 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. Flack declared.
“Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed.
“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they anyway?”
“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully sighed. “They go back a thousand years.”
“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years—I mean three hours.” And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in woods.”
Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you can 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 one knows that.”
“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie said.
“And do they talk a great deal?”
“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the queerest 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 most conversation with Mr. Probert.”
“The old gentleman?”
“No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that has told me most—it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR life—it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all their 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 beautiful story—they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see—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 must forgive 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’s fearfully 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 the marriage.”
“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. de Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.”
“Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted himself 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 of Mr. 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 her death.”
“The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the mischief’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 the Proberts, 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 the top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages—a sounding stream in which our friends became engaged—rolled into the large avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to spend there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with appreciation. “You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old monde.”
One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you’ve received this—I’ve sent the carriage. I’ll explain when you get here what I want to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister—if conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted into blankness on the other. “It’s for something bad—something bad,” Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was unable 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 of a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his daughter’s alliance.
“No you won’t—no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but let them see that they can’t whistle for all of us.” It was the first sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That question had never troubled him.
“I know what it is,” said Delia while she arranged her sister’s garments. “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 her as she flitted away.
She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her in 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 not assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand—they were 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 laughed as she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan’s eyes were in their nature salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her head.
“We’re upside down—terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the house.”
“What’s the matter—what’s the matter?” Francie asked, pale and with parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for that?
“You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our sending for you this way—the first, the only person—in a crisis. Our joys 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 mortification for the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack could only have published something pleasant—something to be proud of. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois de Boulogne.
“Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to my father—containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her ‘Margot,’ about Maxime and Leonie de Villepreux, saying he’s her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa’s in the most awful state!” and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with the volubility of horror and passion. “You’re outraged with us and you must suffer with us,” she went on. “But who has done it? Who has done it? 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 to disavow 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 an unspeakable rage. Everything’s at end, we’ve been served up to the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?—and they all so infamously false!” The poor woman poured forth her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn’t know what to ask first, against what to protest. “Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow’s? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards—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 Margot remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!” wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress was pitiful.
“She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn’t let her. He’s an old friend—a friend of poppa’s—and I like him very much. What my father allows, that’s not for others to criticise!” Francie continued. She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion’s air of tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of an 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 blind defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise—it would appear to be some self-seeking deception.
“Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father—? What devil has 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’t understand it. Of course I’ve talked to Mr. Flack.”
“Oh Francie, don’t say it—don’t SAY it! Dear child, you haven’t talked to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!” Mme. de Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. “You shall see the paper; they’ve got it in the other room—the most disgusting sheet. Margot’s reading it to her husband; he can’t read English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa tried 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 quantity about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see it 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 the most odious details, and your having made a match among the ‘rare old exclusives.’ And the strangest stuff about your father—his having gone into a ‘store’ at the age of twelve. And something about your poor sister—heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they call it, and the way we’ve pushed and got on and our ridiculous pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul’s sister, who had that disease—what do they call it?—that she used to steal things in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a thing? It’s ages ago, it’s dead and buried!”
“You told me, you told me yourself,” said Francie quickly. She turned red 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 you must do, that’s what I see you this way for first alone. I’ve answered for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you—she has got that idea—she has 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 done everything for the last hour to protect you. I’m your godmother, you know, and you mustn’t disappoint me. You’re incapable, and you must say so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE’LL have seen it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you.” Mme. de Brecourt hurried on, and her companion’s bewilderment deepened to see how 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—that you’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 write a piece about the picture—and about my marriage.”
“About your marriage—of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you’re at the bottom of ALL!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her hands.
“He told me—he told me when I went with him to the studio!” Francie asseverated loud. “But he seems to have printed more.”
“MORE? I should think so!” And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing before her. “And you LET him—about yourself? You gave him preposterous facts?”
“I told him—I told him—I don’t know what. It was for his paper—he wants 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, my brother!” she quavered again, turning away.
“If your brother were here you wouldn’t talk to me this way—he’d protect me, Gaston would!” cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her little 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 she sobbed, 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 such ideas!” 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 before she could pass out. “Hush—hush—they’re coming in here, they’re too anxious! Deny—deny it—say you know nothing! Your sister must have said things—and such things: say it all comes from HER!”
“Oh you dreadful—is that what YOU do?” cried Francie, shaking herself free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly to 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 and M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He seemed ten years older.
“Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant reproach.
“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 as Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de Cliche carried her head very far aloft.
“She has nothing to do with it—it’s just as I told you—she’s overwhelmed,” said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window.
“You’d do well to read it—it’s worth the trouble,” Alphonse de Brecourt remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they seemed 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 forced calmness—as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling within—which made Francie draw back. “C’est pourtant rempli de choses—which we know you to have been told of—by what folly, great heaven! It’s right and left—no one’s spared—it’s a deluge of the lowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions I had—I couldn’t resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful as this, God knows—the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow’s with your journalist.”
“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 the window.
“Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche. “I’m very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won’t forget, 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 some powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and she 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 gone to 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 as America!” Mme. de Cliche declared.
“Why have you sent for me—what do you all want me to do? You might explain—I’m only an American girl!” said Francie, whose being only an American girl didn’t prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as high 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 everything to them—I’ll make them understand. The carriage is here—it had orders to wait.”
“I’m not in the least nervous, but I’ve made you all so,” Francie brought out with the highest spirit.
“I defend you, my dear young lady—I insist that you’re only a wretched victim like ourselves,” M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with a smile. “I see the hand of a woman in it, you know,” he went on to the others; “for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn’t sink to—he can’t, his very organisation prevents him—even if he be the dernier des goujats. But please don’t doubt that I’ve maintained that woman not to be you.”
“The way you talk!Idon’t know how to write,” Francie impatiently quavered.
“My poor child, when one knows you as I do—!” murmured Mme. de Brecourt with an arm round her.
“There’s a lady who helps him—Mr. Flack has told me so,” the girl continued. “She’s a literary lady—here in Paris—she writes what he tells her. I think her name’s Miss Topping, but she calls herself Florine—or Dorine,” Francie added.
“Miss Dosson, you’re too rare!” Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. “Then you’ve been three 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 no idea you’d all feel so badly. I didn’t mean any harm. I thought you’d like it.”
The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He didn’t look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she said she thought they’d like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. “Like it—LIKE IT?” 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 to her sister. “Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois—to punish me for having tried to separate you?” she pursued to the poor child, who stood gazing up piteously at the old man.
“I don’t know what he has published—I haven’t seen it—I don’t understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me,” she said to him.
“‘About me’!” M. de Cliche repeated in English. “Elle est divine!” He turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall.
Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it together, saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home immediately—then she’d see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of the room. But Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his sick stare. “You gave information for that? You desired it?”
“WhyIdidn’t desire it—but Mr. Flack did.”
“Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?” the old man groaned.
“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 being engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be interested.”
“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 tell us what you think of it.” And she continued to thrust forward the scandalous journal.
But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert at the others. “I told Gaston I’d certainly do something you wouldn’t like.”
“Well, he’ll believe it now!” cried Mme. de Cliche.
“My poor child, do you think he’ll like it any better?” asked Mme. de Brecourt.
Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. “He’ll see it over there—he has seen it now.”
“Oh my dear, you’ll have news of him. Don’t be afraid!” broke in high derision 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 was some stamp on the band—it came from the office.”
“Mr. Flack—is that his hideous name?—must have seen to that,” Mme. de Brecourt suggested.
“Or perhaps Florine,” M. de Cliche interposed. “I should like to get hold of Florine!”
“I DID—I did tell him so!” Francie repeated with all her fevered candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if she 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 answer for him; he’ll tell you himself, when he returns.”
“He’ll die?” echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much gunpowder.
“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 be the 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 sister continued.
“Yes, my child—you oughtn’t to be here. It’s your father—he ought to understand,” said Mr. Probert.
“For God’s sake don’t send for him—let it all stop!” And Mme. de Cliche made 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. de Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew how—she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to kiss her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad—feeling as she did—she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be bad because Gaston, Gaston—! Francie didn’t complete that thought, yet only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de Brecourt hurried beside her; she wouldn’t take his arm. But he opened the door for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest and most unexpected manner: “You’re charming, mademoiselle—charming, charming!”
Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar—he profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes—as she burst into the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed to 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 her face with a “Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?” Francie said nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what she would with her. “She has been crying, poppa—she HAS,” Delia almost shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she continued. “Will you please tell? I’ve been perfectly wild! Yes you have, you dreadful—!” the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood with his back to the fire.
“Why, chicken,” said Mr. Dosson, “you look as if you had had quite a worry.”
“I told you I should—I told you, I told you!” Francie broke out with a trembling 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 you were.”
“Ain’t you going to be married, childie?” asked Mr. Dosson all considerately, but coming nearer to her.
Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms round him. “Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right straight away?”
“Of course I will, my precious. I’ll take you anywhere. I don’t want anything—it wasn’t MY idea!” And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder.
“I never heard such trash—you can’t behave that way! Has he got engaged to 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 go anywhere you like.”
“You won’t have your daughters insulted, I presume!” Delia cried. “If you don’t tell me this moment what has happened,” she pursued to her sister, “I’ll drive straight round there and make THEM.”
“HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?” asked the old man, bending over his child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. “Did I ever 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 as well go home, certainly. But I guess,” Delia added, “you had better just wait 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 smoke of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it with placidity.
“They think I’ve insulted THEM—they’re in an awful state—they’re almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper—everything, I don’t know what—and they think it’s too wicked. They were all there together—all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. 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 printed there—that they’re immoral, and everything about them; everything that’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 sorts of personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and everything. It’s all printed there and they’ve read it. It says one of them steals.”
“Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about?” Delia enquired sternly. “Where is it printed and what have we got to do with it?”
“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. “I guess they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Why there used to be things about ME—”
“Well, it IS about us too—about every one. They think it’s the same as if I wrote it,” Francie ruefully mentioned.
“Well, you know what you COULD do!” And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for common cheer.
“Do you mean that piece about your picture—that you told me about when you 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—but I 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 it always 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!” Delia continued. “Francie, what DID you want to tell him?”
“I didn’t know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much interest,” 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 I don’t know as you ought to want to,” Mr. Dosson remarked. “If they ARE I’m glad to know it, lovey.” And he gave his younger daughter a glance apparently 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 been arrested. “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 mottled as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. “To break off my engagement?”
“Yes, just that. But I’ll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow that?”
“Allow what?”
“Why Mr. Flack’s vile interference. You won’t let him do as he likes with us, I suppose, will you?”
“It’s all done—it’s all done!” said Francie. The tears had suddenly started into her eyes again.
“Well, he’s so smart that it IS likely he’s too smart,” her father allowed. “But what did they want you to do about it?—that’s whatIwant 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!” Delia almost yelled.
“Where IS the d—-d thing?” their companion asked, looking helplessly about him.
“On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That old woman has it—the one who speaks English—she always has it. Do go and 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!” Francie said. “I thought he’d crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the paper—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 bounced fairly round as from the force of her high spirit.
Mr. Dosson had put on his hat—he was going out for the paper. “Why he kept 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 on the door. “And don’t back down on anything you’ve done.”
“Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!” Delia went on in her exasperation. “It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn’t they ever see a society-paper before?”
“They can’t have seen much,” said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his hand 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 went on.
“They say he’s just the one who’ll feel it most. But I’m the one who does that,” said Francie with a strange smile.
“They’re stuffing you with lies—because THEY don’t like it. He’ll be tender and true,” Delia glared.
“When THEY hate me?—Never!” And Francie shook her head slowly, still with her smile of softness. “That’s what he cared for most—to make them like 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 saying it’s all false or all a mistake.”
“Yes, you’d better make him,” said Francie with a weak laugh. “You’d better 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 from London—going right through without stopping?”
“I don’t know but he did,” said Delia. Then she added: “The mean coward!”
“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!” her sister engaged.
Francie had a pause. “I can protect him without speaking to him. I can tell 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 so particular? He fixed it up,” she said with assurance. “They always do in the papers—they’d be ashamed if they didn’t. Well now he has got to bring out a piece praising them up—praising them to the skies: that’s what 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. She gave no reply to this question but presently said: “We had better go to-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 me just now I wished he was there—I told them so. But now I don’t feel like 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 went on.
Delia planted herself in front of her. “Francie Dosson, if you’re going to tell him you’ve done anything wrong you might as well stop before you begin. 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.’ Now isn’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 asked me to marry him if he hadn’t been able to get THEM to accept me: he thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he’ll do just the same. He’ll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that he’ll never choose me.”
“He’ll never choose Mr. Flack, if that’s what you mean—if you’re going to identify yourself so with HIM!”
“Oh I wish he’d never been born!” Francie wailed; after which she suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick—she was going to 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 the Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie’s innocent remarks as a natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The letter from Paris appeared lively, “chatty,” highly calculated to please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren’t aware over here of the charges brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. “If there was anything in that style they might talk,” he said; and he scanned the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with the text was to depress Delia, who didn’t exactly see what there was in it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some points they didn’t understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous places—the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should they have minded if other people didn’t understand the allusions (these were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brecourt’s account of it, and the part about her own situation and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than it 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 much about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things 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 or Dorine—the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt’s.
All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the Proberts, this didn’t diminish the girl’s sense of responsibility nor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion as she lay there—for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got “case-hardened” Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a convulsion 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 responsibility or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were a part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness of the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at night or the wind and the weather at all times.
The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear of 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 made things so rough to his “chicken.” It was true she had scarcely ever seen him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one had 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 that those other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn’t command. She wanted nothing done and no communication to pass—only a proud unbickering silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these things wouldn’t make it better—very likely they wouldn’t; but at any rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part and her father’s and Delia’s, to make it worse. She told her father that she wouldn’t, as Delia put it, “want to have him” go round, and was in some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn’t seem very clear as to what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn’t afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the paper.
Delia also reassured her; she said she’d see to it that poppa didn’t sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn’t the smallest doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up—all THEM down there—much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything practical to say they’d arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the sense of his daughter’s having been roughly handled he derived some of the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the Proberts as a “body.” If they were consistent with their character or with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn’t exhilarate this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment of Gaston’s horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl—she had at present strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning—that they would only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her knowledge of him—make her understand him properly for the first time. She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the business, close the incident, and all would be over.
He didn’t write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to say that of course he didn’t write when he was on the ocean: how could they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before—before he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack’s hand and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after the 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 over conscientiously and it appears to us that we’ve no right to take any such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn’t exclusively ours but belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we had better not touch it (it’s so delicate, isn’t it, my poor child?) but leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) EVERYTHING should stop. But I’ve liked you, Francie, I’ve believed in you, and I don’t wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you’ve drawn down on us I’ve not treated you with tenderness. It’s a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We’re hearing more of it already—the horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it’s best to leave Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one’s hands off him. Have you anything to lui faire dire—to my precious brother when he arrives? But it’s foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him—whatever, my dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE DE 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, and kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of American travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour—“about dinner-time”—at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long enough to say “I told you so!” with a white face and march off to her room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn’t get at 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 exercise of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had the energy to drag her father out to the banker’s and to keep him out two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn’t turn up before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn’t for an instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. 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 three o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had been through terrible things, and it wasn’t simply the strain of his attention to so much business in America. What passed next she couldn’t remember afterwards; it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her hand—before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently—“Is it true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter’s only a report of YOUR talk?”
“I told him everything—it’s all me, ME, ME!” the girl replied exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might mean.
Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At last the young man went on: “And I who insisted to them that there was no 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 Delia and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance.