"It"s lucky for you, since you"ve got to live here."
"I haven"t got to; there"s no obligation. We haven"t settled anything about that."
"Hasn"t that lady settled it for you?"
"Yes, very likely she has," said Francie placidly enough. "I don"t like her so well as the others."
"You like the others very much?"
"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you."
"That one at the studio didn"t make much of me, certainly," Mr. Flack declared.
"Yes, she"s the most haughty," Francie allowed.
"Well, what is it all about?" her friend demanded. "Who are they anyway?"
"Oh it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl cheerfully sighed. "They go back a thousand years."
"Well, we"ve GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours." And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It"s many a day since I"ve been to the old Bois. I don"t fool round much in woods."
Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don"t see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid."
"Well, they tell me you like them better after you"re married."
"Why after they"re married they"re worse--I mean the ideas. Every one knows that."
"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie said.
"And do they talk a great deal?"
"Well, I should think so. They don"t do much else, and all about the queerest things--things I never heard of."
"Ah THAT I"ll bet my life on!" Mr. Flack returned with understanding.
"Of course," his companion obligingly proceeded, ""ve had most conversation with Mr. Probert."
"The old gentleman?"
"No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it"s not he that has told me most--it"s Mme. de Brecourt. She"s great on life, on THEIR life--it"s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all their troubles and complications."
"Complications?" Mr. Flack threw off. "That"s what she calls them.
It seems very different from America. It"s just like a beautiful story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see--without being told."
"What sort of things?"
"Well, like Mme. de Cliche"s--" But Francie paused as if for a word.
Her friend was prompt with a.s.sistance. "Do you mean her complications?"
"Yes, and her husband"s. She has terrible ones. That"s why one must forgive her if she"s rather peculiar. She"s very unhappy."
"Do you mean through her husband?"
"Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives."
Mr. Flack"s hand closed over it. "Mme. de Brives?"
"Yes, she"s lovely," said Francie. "She ain"t very young, but she"s fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme.
de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can"t bear Mme. de Villepreux."
"Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man," George Flack moralised.
"Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the marriage."
"Who had?--against what marriage?"
"When Maggie Probert became engaged."
"Is that what they call her--Maggie?"
"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her."
"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!" Mr. Flack permitted himself to guess. "And who"s Mme. de Villepreux?" he proceeded.
"She"s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac."
"And who"s THAT old sinner?" the young man asked.
"Oh I guess she"s dead," said Francie. "She used to be a great friend of Mr. Probert--of Gaston"s father."
"He used to go to tea with her?"
"Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her death."
"The way they do come out with "em!" Mr. Flack chuckled. "And who the mischief"s Susan?"
"Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme.
de Villepreux isn"t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime."
"With Maxime?"
"That"s M. de Cliche."
"Oh I see--I see!" and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the top of the Champs Elysees and were pa.s.sing below the wondrous arch to which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to spend there, of the rest of Francie"s pleasant prattle, of the place near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where they might sit down. "I see, I see," he repeated with appreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old monde."