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156 been served up to the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things? and they are all too infamously false!" The poor woman poured forth her trouble in questions and contradictions and groans; she knew not what to ask first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that person Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh, Francie, what has happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards—walking with him—in the Bois."

"Well, I didn't see her," the girl said.

"You were talking with him—you were too absorbed: that's what Margot says. Oh, Francie, Francie!" cried Mme. de Brécourt, catching her breath.

"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He's an old friend—a friend of my father's, and I like him very much. What my father allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued. She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air of tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of an act she herself did not know, could not comprehend nor measure yet. But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into defence—defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise, a sort of selfish deception.

"Oh, how can you bear with such wretches—