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Before dinner was over she inquired of him how he had got on ‘in his profession’ since they last met, and he was too proud, or so he thought, to tell her anything but the simple truth, that he had not got on very well. If he was to ask her again for Dora it would be just as he was, an honourable but not particularly successful man, making no show of lures and bribes. ‘I am not a remarkably good painter,’ he said. ‘I judge myself perfectly. And then I have been handicapped at home. I have had a great many serious bothers and worries.’

‘Ah, we were so sorry to hear about your dear father.’

The tone of these words was kind and sincere; still Raymond thought that in this case her bonte might have gone a little further. At any rate this was the only allusion that she made to his bothers and worries. Indeed, she always passed over such things lightly; she was an optimist for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to do (Raymond indulged in the reflection) with the headway she made in a society tired of its own pessimism.

After dinner, when they went into the drawing-room, the young man noted with complacency that this apartment, vast in itself, communicated with two or three others into which it would be easy to pass without attracting attention, the doors being replaced by old tapestries, looped up and offering no barrier. With pictures and curiosities all over the place, there were plenty of pretexts for wandering away. He lost no time in asking Dora whether her mother would send Mademoiselle Bourde after them if she were to go with him into one of the other rooms, the same way she had done–didn’t she remember?–that last night in New York, at the hotel. Dora didn’t admit that she remembered (she was too loyal to her mother for that, and Raymond foresaw that this loyalty would be a source of irritation to him again, as it had been in the past), but he perceived, all the same, that she had not forgotten. She raised no difficulty, and a few moments later, while they stood in an adjacent salon (he had stopped to admire a bust of Effie, wonderfully living, slim and juvenile, the work of one of the sculptors who are the pride of contemporary French art), he said to her, looking about him, ‘How has she done it so fast?’

‘Done what, Raymond?’

‘Why, done everything. Collected all these wonderful things; become intimate with Madame de Brives and every one else; organised her life–the life of all of you–so brilliantly.’

‘I have never seen mamma in a hurry,’ Dora replied.

‘Perhaps she will be, now that I have come,’ Raymond suggested, laughing.

The girl hesitated a moment ‘Yes, she was, to invite you–the moment she knew you were here.’

‘She has been most kind, and I talk like a brute. But I am liable to do worse–I give you notice. She won’t like it any more than she did before, if she thinks I want to make up to you.’

‘Don’t, Raymond–don’t!’ the girl exclaimed, gently, but with a look of sudden pain.

‘Don’t what, Dora?–don’t make up to you?’

‘Don’t begin to talk of those things. There is no need. We can go on being friends.’

‘I will do exactly as you prescribe, and heaven forbid I should annoy you. But would you mind answering me a question? It is very particular, very intimate.’ He stopped, and she only looked at him, saying nothing. So he went on: ‘Is it an idea of your mother’s that you should marry–some person here?’ He gave her a chance to reply, but still she was silent, and he continued: ‘Do you mind telling me this? Could it ever be an idea of your own?’

‘Do you mean some Frenchman?’

Raymond smiled. ‘Some protege of Madame de Brives.’