voice, but her
brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in
several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall come
to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this
hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any
one."

Mme. de Brecourt's eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the
door. "What do you mean by her father's being certainly rich? That's
such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?"

"Ah that's a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he left
her.

VI

The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas
beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel de
l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their
father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris,
but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when
you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet people
on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good
gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not
yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr.
Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was
patient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent
amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and
the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness,
in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson,
little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource,
on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a
smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room
at the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to
himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of
his daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de
Villiers.

This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies
clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their
faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague
and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie's lover had
written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation
with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience
forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour.