I

Summary

“I GUESS my daughter's in here,” the old man said, leading the way into the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel (he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel), and had gone up to him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait upon the young man: he had as a matter of course got up and made his way across the court, to announce to the personage in question that she had a visitor. He looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentle-man's good offices as he would have accepted those of a waiter, murmur-ing no protest for the sake of making it appear that he had come to see him as well. An observer of these two persons would have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it natural that any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should find her for him. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George Flack stepped in after him.

The reading-room of the Hôtel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was not of great proportions, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist principally of a bare, highly-polished floor, on which it was easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his percep-tion, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and the New York Herald, which he had already read.