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

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

"Do you mean because I told you?"

"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and that walk 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 would appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and about you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of the 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't you remember when we sat there in the Bois?"

"Oh rubbish!" Delia panted.

"Yes, and Mme. de Cliche pa.s.sed."

"And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh," he reminded her--"it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she's scandalised now--she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last in a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it's a bigger pose than ever, and, as I said just now, it's too d.a.m.ned cheap. It's THIN--that's what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn't count. They pretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it first-rate."

"Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn't that dead and buried days and days ago?" Delia quavered afresh. She hovered there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming; and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr.

Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of their questions, as a subst.i.tute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't been afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened yet might come to pa.s.s between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly pleased 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 a sure proof of the state of her sister's spirit.

"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your father has told me?" Mr. Flack enquired. "I don't mean it was he gave me the tip; I guess I've seen enough over here by this time to have worked it out. They're scandalised all right--they're blue with horror and have never 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 papers every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain't like the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn't think how the apples got into the dumplings. They're just grabbing a pretext to break because--because, well, they don't think you're blue blood. They're delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they're all cackling over the egg it has taken so many hens of 'em to lay. That's MY diagnosis if you want to know."

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

"What does it matter what he says, my dear?" she interposed. "Do make him drop the subject--he's talking very wild. I'm going down to see what poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!" At the door she paused a 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 that day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted out.

As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. "Now look here, 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, Miss Francie!"

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

"Don't you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated to you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public behind 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 told them 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 too sweet!" She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but he, rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little before him. "They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you believe you had outraged them?"

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

"The cowards!" George Flack after a moment remarked. "And where was young 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 it either?"

"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 d.u.c.h.ess and his French brothers-in-law from whom 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 your standing 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 the good of the papers? Besides, it wasn't I; it was a lady who helps me here--you've heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to know 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 YOU think 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 had never heard from her: "Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me such questions?"

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

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

But he was launched now and he let himself go. "Why won't you understand it--why won't you understand the rest? Don't you see how it has worked round--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 d.a.m.ned sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do anything in the world for you?"

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

"Because I always ask questions--it's my nature and my business to ask them. 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 you sympathised 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 a.s.surance the girl's cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she even smiled; then she replied: "Oh yes I do--only not so much."