o instruct him that this wouldn't do.
The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably
never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts.
Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for
him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the
worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to
it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it.
"Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we've done
for him:" Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had
expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from
which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with
great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for
him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he
showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter
quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was
impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her.
He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he
held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from
the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his
private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr.
Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account
for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of
familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on with
them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could
do that even if one couldn't converse with them. He succeeded in making
Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick
inflammability. "Yes," she said, "we must insist on their positive, not
on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored,
their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming
primitive instincts--we must work those!" And the brother and sister
excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must
be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm
the depth of their responsibility.

On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham
with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine,
without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or fo