light on a young girl, in some ways it was more convenient to have her a foreigner with no family, so to speak, rather than a girl of Bayonne society, whose family would expect to have much to say about all the arrangements of Jean-Pierre's life. Heavens! suppose it had been Elise Fortier—think of Jean-Pierre saddled with Madame Fortier as a mother-in-law! Not that that worthless idle American mother-in-law was much better; except that those people must go back to America some time! Everybody did go back to his native country ultimately. And too, she was a weak, foolish thing who would never have the force to make trouble. Look at the way she let herself be run by her servants. Also, until now, she had paid precious little attention to her daughter; there was no reason to think she would develop any more interest in her later on. And the child herself seemed malleable material. There was no doubt she would be a pretty woman, and marrying very young, she would certainly assimilate the standards of the Garnier family.
When the concert was over, she said to Jean-Pierre, "If you like, we will wait till the girls come out, and walk home with Danielle and her class-mates." As she spoke she nodded to old Jeanne Amigorena, the cook in the American family, who stood there, also waiting, her young mistress' cloak and hat on her arm. It occurred to her that one of the first things to do would be to eliminate that servant. She probably knew altogether too much about Marise's family. It would not be prudent to have her around a young menage; and anyhow, old servants were an intolerable nuisance with their airs of belonging to the family.
Behind the scenes where the girls were waiting for the concert to begin, there had been a deal of giggling and whispering and rustling. Mademoiselle Vivier, chosen to turn the pages for the players because she was so severe it was thought she could keep them in order, was "gend'arming around" as the girls called it, pouncing on one group for laughing too loud, and on another for making too much noise as they executed grotesque caricatures of the way they intended to make their entries on
