Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/154

144 offer to the character in which it represented her but he didn't think it well painted. "Regardez-moi ça, et ça, et ça, je vous demande!" he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas, toward spots that appeared to him eccentric, with his glove, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. "Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The novelty of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a mystification to Mr. Probert.

Francie remembered now (she had forgotten it) that Margaret de Cliché had told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliché smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were—the papa and the grandeœur—the girl replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliché became very stern indeed—assumed an aspect that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual, among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable but