on't care anything about his kind."

"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I know
that when I took you up there?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Flack," said Francie, trying to gain ground from him.

This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Will
you keep me as a friend?"

"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature.

"All right," he replied; and they presently overtook their companions.

V

Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow
whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him
something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have
been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of
showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad
joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow
scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him
by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing
ghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner," but it had not made its mark
on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and
pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general
sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could
still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose
life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused
Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and
he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family
among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the
phrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and this
the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the
different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all
for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion,
and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what
Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them
enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming
parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him,
and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair
that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in
freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the
Parisian studio with the moral and social i