“It is a head that would tell well on the stage,” the stout lady suggested. “And speaking of the theatre I saw mademoiselle Blanche Fontaine bathing here the other day. She is very well in the water.” “Yes. She is staying near madame Vervier at Les Vaudettes. She is a friend. The child is perhaps destined for the theatre.—I can hardly imagine mademoiselle Fontaine in the water,” and the lady of the earrings smiled. “I can hardly see her off the stage.” “Ah, she is very well in the water,” the stout lady again asserted. “_Elle est fausse maigre._ And she swims as well as she acts. What a talent it is?” “A little shrill, a little metallic, perhaps,” said the lady of the earrings; but the stout lady was quite secure of her admiration and said that she considered mademoiselle Fontaine the foremost of their young actresses. A little silence followed, and Giles, who had contemplated withdrawal, settled himself again to his book when the talk, as the friends resumed it, turned on their families. The stout lady spoke of her Jacques at the Ecole Polytechnique; of _le petit_ Charlot and his love for music. The lady of the earrings spoke of Andrée, who would soon be old enough to marry, and of Grand-père, left up at the white house on the cliff with Yvonne to entertain him. _Ma tante_ arrived to-morrow to open Les Mouettes and was bringing a _religieuse_, an admirable woman, who was to take charge of Grand-père. “_Quel homme surprenant_,” said the stout lady, and the lady in grey said that he was, indeed, wonderful. “Eighty-two, and interesting himself still in all our lives. I was discussing Andrée’s marriage with him yesterday. We are fortunate, indeed, in having kept him so long with us.” Giles, as he half listened, gained a further impression, after his impression of the Dumont _milieu_, different, yet vividly the same in its one essential, of the solidly, complicatedly built structure of French family life; its dependencies; its responsibilities; its ramifications. They all meant each other. They all lived with and for each other, and the longer they lived the more important they became, thus inversing the natural course of family life in England. Andrée, old enough to marry, was a very insignificant person compared to Grand-père. “And who is the young man with madame Vervier?” asked the stout lady, who had evidently just arrived at Allongeville, since she thus plied her friend with queries. “The little one is René Claussel, I know.—But the tall one? He is as handsome as madame Vervier herself.” “That is André de Valenbois. My uncle named him to me yesterday. _Charmant garçon, n’est-ce pas?_” “André de Valenbois! But is he not to marry Babette de Cévrieux’s daughter? Surely I have heard something of a marriage in contemplation there.”