"Oh! do you mean to say that you don't know her father's history? A poor Italian stucco worker. He came to Paris without a sou and bought a bit of ground with a wretched little house at Montparnasse. I don't know where he got the money from to buy it. Well, this land turned out to be a regular Montfaucon! He sold thirty thousand pounds' worth of his precious stuff—and then he's been mixed up with Stock Exchange affairs. Disgusting!"
"Oh, well," put in Henri, "I fancy you are going out of your way to find folks. Why don't you ask Mlle. Bourjot? They happen to be at Sannois now."
"Mlle. Bourjot?" repeated Mme. Mauperin.
"Noémi?" said Renée quickly, "I should just think I should like to ask her. But this winter I thought her so distant with me. She has something or other—I don't know——"
"She has, or rather she will have, twelve thousand pounds a year," interrupted Denoisel, "and mothers are apt to watch over their daughters when such is the case. They will not allow them to get too intimate with a sister who has a brother. They have made her understand this; that's about the long and short of it."
"Then, too, they are so high and mighty, those folks are; they might have descended from—And yet," continued Mme. Mauperin, breaking off and turning to her son, "they have always been very pleasant with you, Henri, haven't they? Mme. Bourjot is always very nice to you?"
"Yes, and she has complained several times of your not going to her soirées; she says you don't take Renée often enough to see her daughter."
"Really?" exclaimed Renée, very delighted.
"My dear," said Mme. Mauperin, "what do you think of what Henri says—Mlle. Bourjot?"
"What objection do you want me to make?"