Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn’t understand it, and kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of American travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour--“about dinner-time”--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long enough to say “I told you so!” with a white face and march off to her room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn’t get at her that night. It was another of Delia’s inspirations not to try, after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had the energy to drag her father out to the banker’s and to keep him out two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn’t turn up before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn’t for an instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. He only said as he arrived: “I couldn’t come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had been through terrible things, and it wasn’t simply the strain of his attention to so much business in America. What passed next she couldn’t remember afterwards; it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--“Is it true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter’s only a report of YOUR talk?” “I told him everything--it’s all me, ME, ME!” the girl replied exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might mean. Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At last the young man went on: “And I who insisted to them that there was no natural delicacy like yours!”