Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/225

Rh He looked at her, helpless and bitter. "It's not the newspapers, in your country, that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! And the ladies have them on their tables."

"You told me we couldn't here—that the Paris ones are too bad," said Francie.

"Bad they are, God knows; but they have never published anything like that—poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent, quiet people who only want to be left alone."

Francie sank into a chair by the table, as if she were too tired to stand longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamp-lit plush she looked up at him. "Was it there you saw it?"

"Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment I got there—I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I opened the paper in the hall of an hotel (there was a big marble floor and spittoons!) and my eyes fell upon that horror. It made me ill."

"Did you think it was me?"

"About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, too tormented."

"Then why didn't you write to me, if you didn't think it was me?"

"Write to you? I wrote to you every three days."

"Not after that."

"Well, I may have omitted a post at the last.—I thought it might be Delia," Gaston added in a moment.