Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/195

Rh write when he was on the sea: how could they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before—before he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They were ever so much too busy at the last and they were going to see their correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack's hand and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and a long note from Mme. de Brécourt, received forty-eight hours after the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows:

",—I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we have talked it over conscientiously and it appears to us that we have no right to take any such step till Gaston arrives. The situation is not exclusively ours but belongs to him as well, and we feel that we ought to make it over to him in as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we had better not touch it (it's so delicate, isn't it, my poor child?) but leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been constatée (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene), everything should stop. But I have liked you, Francie, I have believed in you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you have drawn down upon us I have not treated you with tenderness. It is a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We are hearing more of it already—the horrible Republican papers here have (as we know) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Léonie de Villepreux has been with