Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/127

Rh begin to belong. I'm difficult about women—how can I help it? Therefore when you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a miracle, I feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ça, mon cher. However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost one's enthusiasm everything is the same, and one might as well perish by the sword as by famine."

"I hoped she would fascinate you on the spot," Gaston remarked, rather ruefully.

"'Fascinate'—the language you fellows use!"

"Well, she will yet."

"She will never know at least that she doesn't: I will promise you that," said Mr. Probert.

"Ah, be sincere with her, father—she's worth it!" his son broke out.

When the old gentleman took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, Gaston was more provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he had a good while since made up his mind that there was an element of stupidity in it. It was fatuous to square one's self so serenely in the absence of a sense: so far from being fine it was gross not to feel Francie Dosson. He thanked God he did. He didn't know what old frumps his father might have frequented (the style of 1830, with long curls in front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a body, in a point suggestive of twenty whalebones,