Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/165

Rh how she had refused him and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove,) in the Bois de Boulogne.

"Oh, the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to my father containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her 'Margot,' about Maxime and Léonie de Villepreux, saying he's her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate, in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa's in the most awful state!" said Mme. de Brécourt, panting to take breath. She had spoken with the volubility of horror and passion. "You are 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 is in an unspeakable rage. Everything is at end, we have