“Yes,” she said, “we must insist on their positive, not on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming primitive instincts--we must work those!” And the brother and sister excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm the depth of their responsibility. On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of Mr. Probert’s, with Gaston’s rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la Concorde. “We should have to have them to dinner.” The young man noted his father’s conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had not made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the immense luck that it hadn’t been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds; which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could bear French noise but couldn’t for the life of him bear American. As for English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched it--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie’s lover knew moreover--though he was a little disappointed that no charmed exclamation should have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the girl’s rare spell had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn’t have liked her. “Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon,” he replied. “They’ll like it so much.” “And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?” “Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have later.”