The apartment in question had had a various experience, but it had probably never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. Gaston was taught to feel that his family made a great sacrifice for him, but in a very few days he said to himself that he was safe, now they knew the worst. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to it, but they judged it well that he should measure the full extent of it. "Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we have done for him:" Mme. de Brécourt told him that Marguerite de Cliché had expressed herself in that sense, at one of the family conclaves from which he had been absent. These high commissions sat, for several days, with great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this—that his private irritation produced a kind of cheerful glow in regard to Mr. Dosson and Delia, whom he could not defend nor lucidly explain nor make people like, but whom he had ended, after so many days of
