ourt and de Cliche and their husbands,
who had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the
gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have
been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had
not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession,
and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long
historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels
and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly
little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when
they told her that the whole maniere d'etre of her family inspired them
with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche
had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old
noblesse of France. It wouldn't have occurred to the girl that such
things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover,
whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in
a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken
for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now;
he noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover
pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and
corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people
should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a
high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without
sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their
settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and
the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence
was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt:
there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection.

VIII

When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with
his father's request by returning to the room in which the old man
habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses.
"Of course you'll continue to live with me. You'll understand that I
don't consent to your going away. You'll have the rooms occupied at
first by Susan and Alphonse."

Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the
future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost
in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This