"Ah, then I mustn't publish it--don't you be playing any journalistic tricks on me!" "I don't think," said Bertie Morris. And their eyes met. CHAPTER V GENERAL D'ARNY AND HIS DAUGHTER I General d'Arny lived in an old house in the Boulevard St. Germain, one of the few monuments still existing to the golden age of Récamier and the salons. He did not care a scudo for the literary and artistic associations of this gloomy mansion, but much for the fact that he paid little rent. Beaumarchais had lived there on the eve of his flight to Holland; the great rooms had known Fleury and his fellows, Balzac and Saint-Beuve--a very panel of genius written across the centuries. It all meant very little to Hubert d'Arny, the bulk of whose fortune went into the trough at Panama; the residue into the hands of the jobbers on the Bourse. The general was notoriously a financial derelict; as notoriously a suspect to his many enemies in the Chamber. He had married late in life--some years after the war--and his wife died in childbirth. One daughter, Claudine, was alternately the object of a maudlin affection and of sentimental regret. She cost a great deal of money, and had the indecency to arrive at a marriageable age. When Captain Issy-Ferrault, a son of one of the oldest aristocracies in France, came forward, the general assented in spite of his democratic principles. The business of providing for the girl aged him pathetically. The newspapers said it was Morocco; but the trouble lay much nearer home. As it chanced, John Faber arrived in Paris in the midst of the preparations for Claudine's wedding. He knew nothing of it; no one had guessed that he had any interest in the daughter of the French Minister of Artillery, or she in him. Claudine went to America at the invitation of the French Ambassador, whose children were her friends. When Faber was introduced to her upon the ship, she said frankly that she did not like him. His manners were _gauche_, and his eyes inquisitive. She avoided him with a sure instinct, being ignorant that he knew anything of her or her family. This was a great misfortune, for she had many qualities which appeal to men, and Faber was not the kind of man to remain insensible to them. In Paris, upon her return, she entered the promised land of preparation. The general swore loudly while he signed the cheques, but signed them none the less. Dressmakers flocked to the Boulevard St. Germain, and their mouths were full of pins. Claudine was of a romantic temperament, but it could stoop to laces and fine linen. She argle-bargled with her father like a wench at a fair, and when he discounted the list, she declared that she would not be married at all. A scandal was the potent weapon in her armament. He could not have a scandal.