ad spoken with
the volubility of horror and passion. "You're outraged with us and you
must suffer with us," she went on. "But who has done it? Who has done
it? Who has done it?"

"Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!" Francie quickly replied. She was appalled,
overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to
disavow her knowledge.

"Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot,
he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime's in an
unspeakable rage. Everything's at end, we've been served up to
the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such
things?--and they all so infamously false!" The poor woman poured forth
her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn't know
what to ask first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that wretch
Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh Francie, what has
happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you
afterwards--walking with him--in the Bois."

"Well, I didn't see her," the girl said.

"You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that's what Margot
remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!" wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress
was pitiful.

"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He's
an old friend--a friend of poppa's--and I like him very much. What my
father allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued.
She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air of
tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of
an act she herself didn't know, couldn't comprehend nor measure yet.
But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind
defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her
consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it
would appear to be some self-seeking deception.

"Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil
has he paid to tattle to him?"

"You scare me awfully--you terrify me," the girl could but plead.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it, I don't
understand it. Of course I've talked to Mr. Flack."

"Oh Francie, don't say it--don't SAY it! Dear child, you haven't talked
to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!" Mme. de
Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed
to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare.
"You shall see t