Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/123

Rh pages softly, contentedly, with the lamp-light shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. Formerly he was out every night in the week—Gaston was perfectly aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little frivolous. He was essentially a social animal, and indeed—except perhaps poor Jane, in her damp old castle in Brittany—they were all social animals. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where there was a circle round the fire and winged words flew about and there was always some clever person before the chimney-piece, holding or challenging the rest. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that liked to take possession of the hearthrug. People left it to him; he was so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in argument. His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually not more conclusive than a shrugging, inarticulate resignation, an "Ah, you know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a part of the essence of some dozen good houses, most of them over the river, in the conservative faubourg,