y
by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the
sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from
the master's eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of
that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had
become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and
go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris.
The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically
faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had
best wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously
accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an
introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an
equal energy on Mr. Dosson's part suddenly appeared to reach and to
move that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced,
to attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties,
since he couldn't in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not
only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but
Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that
Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal
philosophy, wouldn't have felt his doing so square with propriety. The
young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than,
in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she
herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia
declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till
she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that
she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de
Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him
in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of
marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but
not till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her
refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate.

All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr.
Dosson: "I'm not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you'll coach
me properly, and trust me, why shouldn't I rush across and transact
your business as well as my father's?" Strange as it appeared, Francie
offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which
would last six or seven