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

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

"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she's always a.s.suring one of it,"

Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak to me."

"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's silent 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 funny little shade. It's not for ourselves I'm afraid; it's for them. They'll be 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? You haven'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 good as her English."

"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she's very pretty 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 of view and your own experience everything--that I've seen beauties without number. I've known the most charming women of our time--women of an order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to belong. I'm difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a 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 lost one's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish by the sword as by famine."

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

"'Fascinate'--the language you fellows use! How many times in one's life is 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 a fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine perceptions one didn't have: so far from its showing experience it showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked G.o.d she was just the sort of imponderable infinite quant.i.ty, such as there were no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn't know what old frumps his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could remember Mme. de Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the lady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies the 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 momentary hesitation.

"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 you mind my speaking of them?"

Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane's having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he were 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 the question of money and he was splendid. We can't be more mercenary than he."

"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 flattered himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of pecuniary 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 of it."

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

Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: "I think they are. However, the period of discussion's closed. We've taken the 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 rejoinder was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from protest 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 whole connexion 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 himself in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This was especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of two of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether she displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but he managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain importance to be made. "It seems rather odd to me that you should all appear to accept the step I'M about to take as a necessity disagreeable at the best, when I myself hold that I've been so exceedingly fortunate."

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

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

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

"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that as things have turned out you shouldn't be struck with my felicity. To get something so charming 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 marry an American. There's a sad want of freshness--there's even a provinciality--in the way we've Gallicised."

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

"Like what, dear father?"

"Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise what 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 a little conclusive sigh.

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