of his dinners and helped him so handsomely
to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a
bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice
was the little jerk.

The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston's
sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes,
to see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she
received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening
before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should
have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she
didn't consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that
SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say,
and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to
the indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were
explanations, assurances, de part et d'autre, with which it was
manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would
therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in
patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn't propose an earlier
moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking,
the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had
just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of
the French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most
perfidious extracts. His father hadn't stirred out of the house, hadn't
put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime
were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They
couldn't face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach,
fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible
for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had
appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtually
confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to
that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the
meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having
caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his
affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon.

A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one
of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it
in her pocket. Delia sat