MR. FLACK'S relations with his old friends did not, after his appearance in Paris, take on that familiarity and frequency which had marked their intercourse a year before: he let them know frankly that he could easily see the situation was quite different. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about the past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in pledges now repudiated. “What's the matter? Won't you come round there with us some day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why the young journalist should not be a welcome and congruous figure in the Cours la Reine.

Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he know a lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they should have their own society? The young man's treatment of the question was humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. When he maintained that the Dossons had “shed” him, Mr. Dosson exclaimed, “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie observed that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, inasmuch as he knew perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware she was a good deal less accessible than she had been the previous spring, for Mesdames de Brécourt and de Cliché (the former much more than the latter) took a considerable number of her hours. In spite of her protest to Gaston against a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their company (they had so much to tell her about what her new life would be, and it was generally very pleasant), and she thought it would be nice if in these intervals he should give himself to her father and even to Delia as he used to do.

But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature seemed to be established by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently did not care for her father for himself, and though Mr. Dosson was the least querulous of men she divined that he suspected their old companion had fallen away.