While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which was the essence of the good gentleman’s nature. He wanted to see Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be a sign of a family of cranks—so little did any experience of his own match it—than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn’t seem to Mr. Dosson to disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn’t be there if the Proberts didn’t point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn’t turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice was the little jerk.
The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston’s sight 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—she received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she didn’t consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that SHE 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 to the indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were explanations, assurances, de part et d’autre, with which it was manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn’t propose an earlier moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of the French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most perfidious extracts. His father hadn’t stirred out of the house, hadn’t put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They couldn’t face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn’t virtually confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon.
A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister’s face. The weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle and was making sure if her companion were awake—she had been perfectly still for so long—when her glance was drawn to the door, which she heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by his visit.
“I saw your father downstairs—he says it’s all right,” said the journalist, advancing with a brave grin. “He told me to come straight up—I had quite a talk with him.”
“All right—ALL RIGHT?” Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. “Yes indeed—I should say so!” Then she checked herself, asking in another manner: “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. If you’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 showed she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating points. “Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of anything so cheap?”
“All about what?—all about what?” said Delia, whose attempt to represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had asked the young man to sit down. “I thought you were going to stay a month 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’t suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up here.”