now reached the period of courteous tolerance, wearing an expressionless
face, affecting perfect indifference and strict politeness, and
carefully avoiding everything which might seem to hint that Florent was
boarding and lodging with them without their receiving the slightest
payment from him. Not, indeed, that she would have accepted any payment
from him, she was above all that; still he might, at any rate, she
thought, have lunched away from the house.

"We never seem to be alone now," she remarked to Quenu one day. "If
there is anything we want to say to one another we have to wait till we
go upstairs at night."

And then, one night when they were in bed, she said to him: "Your
brother earns a hundred and fifty francs a month, doesn't he? Well, it's
strange he can't put a trifle by to buy himself some more linen. I've
been obliged to give him three more of your old shirts."

"Oh, that doesn't matter," Quenu replied. "Florent's not hard to please;
and we must let him keep his money for himself."

"Oh, yes, of course," said Lisa, without pressing the matter further. "I
didn't mention it for that reason. Whether he spends his money well or
ill, it isn't our business."

In her own mind she felt quite sure that he wasted his salary at the
Mehudins'.

Only on one occasion did she break through her habitual calmness of
demeanour, the quiet reserve which was the result of both natural
temperament and preconceived design. The beautiful Norman had made