Chapter 6

The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas
beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel de
l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their
father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris,
but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when
you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet people on
the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good
gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not
yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr.
Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient
and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent
amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and
the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in
the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson,
little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource,
on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a
smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at
the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to
himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his
daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de
Villiers.

This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies
clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their
faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and
aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie's lover had
written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation
with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience
forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so
good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to
keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter.

"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie's father, leaning
far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very
little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on
each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat.

"To show, sir--what do you mean?"

"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?"

"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to
satisfy yourself on that point. My income's derived from three sources.
First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my
poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of
ours who took a great fancy to him (he went