As the Granger family became more acclimatised, as it were, Clarissa found herself with more time at her disposal. Sophia had attached herself to a little clique of English ladies, and had her own engagements and her separate interests. Clarissa's friends were for the most part Frenchwomen, whom she had known in London, or to whom she had been introduced by Lady Laura. Mr. Granger had his own set, and spent his afternoons agreeably enough, drinking soda water, reading _Galignani_, and talking commerce or politics with his compeers at the most respectable cafe on the Boulevards. Being free therefore to dispose of her afternoons, Clarissa, when Lovel's picture was finished, went naturally to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. Having once taken her servants there, she had no farther scruples. "They will think I come to see a dressmaker," she said to herself. But in this she did not give those domestic officers credit for the sharpness of their class. Before she had been three times to her brother's lodgings, John Thomas, the footman, had contrived--despite his utter ignorance of the French tongue--to discover who were the occupants of No. 7, and had ascertained that Mr. Austin, the painter, was one of them. "Who'd have thought of her coming to see that chap Hostin?" said John Thomas to the coachman. "That's a rum start, ain't it?" "Life is made up of rum starts, John Thomas," replied the coachman sententiously. "Is there a Mrs. Hostin, do you know?" "Yes, he's got a wife. I found that out from the porter, though the blessed old buffer can't speak anything but his French gibberish. 'Madame?' I said, bawling into his stupid old ear. 'Mossoo and Madame Hostin? comprenny?' and he says, 'Ya-ase,' and then bursts out laughing, and looks as proud as a hen that's just laid a hegg--' Ya-ase, Mossoo et Madame." George Fairfax and Clarissa met very frequently after that ball at the Embassy. It happened that they knew the same people; Mr. Fairfax, indeed, knew every one worth knowing in Paris; and he seemed to have grown suddenly fond of respectable society, going everywhere in the hope of meeting Mrs. Granger, and rarely staying long anywhere, if he did not meet her. There were those who observed this peculiarity in his movements, and shrugged their shoulders significantly. It was to be expected, of course, said this butterfly section of humanity: a beautiful young woman, married to a man old enough to be her father, would naturally have some one interested in her.