"My sweetest child, what in Heaven's name has happened? Your brother, Mr. Effecotte!"
Louise Duprez gasped as she spoke the name. Edward Heathcote was her benefactor, that one Englishman whom she admired and honoured with all her heart and mind, whom she thought almost equal to the typical Frenchman, the French gentleman of a régime that is almost forgotten, of a day that is dead.
"My brother is quite well, at least as far as I know," answered Hilda, with sisterly indifference; and then she made Mdlle. Duprez sit down, and knelt at her feet, clasping her hands, and looking up at her earnestly. "My dear, kind friend, I want you to help me in a crisis of my life," she said.
"To help you to run away with Mr. Grahame, I suppose. No, no, Hilda, pas si bête; I am your brother's friend above all things. If Mr. Effecotte disapproves of your marriage, I will do nothing to further it."
"Pray don't be in such a hurry," said Hilda. "Hear my trouble first, and then help me to lighten it, if you can. I think you ought to know that I am not the kind of girl to make a runaway marriage."
"Indeed, I know nothing of the kind about any English girl. Runaway marriages seem as common in this country as runaway knocks at my door."
"Englishwomen run away before marriage, and Frenchwomen after," retorted Hilda.
"I don't think your English matrons such irreproachable creatures," said the Parisienne. "There is your Lady Valeria Harborough, for instance, who had one of the best husbands in Christendom, and yet was always surrounded by a bevy of admirers, and made herself more talked about than any woman in Plymouth."
"Was she really talked about?" asked Hilda eagerly.
"Really, really. I don't mean to say that she was supposed to be actually incorrect in her conduct; but she brought her Indian manners back to England with her, and she had always her court of fools and fops about her. And now the papers are beginning to be impertinent about her—or, at least, this stupid little paper, which models itself on some of the London society papers."