He pushed away his platter and got up.  “I’ll go and eat at the ordinary below stairs.”

Thereupon up jumped Columbine.

“And I’ll come with you, Scaramouche!” cried she.

It acted like a signal.  Had the thing been concerted it couldn’t have fallen out more uniformly.  Binet, in fact, was persuaded of a conspiracy.  For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake of Leandre, Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet found himself sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room — a badly shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against the dread by which he was suddenly invaded.

He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholy occupation when perhaps a half-hour later his daughter entered the room, returned at last from her excursion.

She looked pale, even a little scared — in reality excessively self-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaited her.

Seeing no one but her father in the room, she checked on the threshold.

“Where is everybody?” she asked, in a voice rendered natural by effort.

M. Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were blood-injected.  He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh noises in his throat.  Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and comely and looking so completely the lady of fashion in her long fur-trimmed travelling coat of bottle green, her muff and her broad hat adorned by a sparkling Rhinestone buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair.  No need to fear the future whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramouche play what tricks he would.

He expressed, however, none of these comforting reflections.

“So you’re back at last, little fool,” he growled in greeting.  “I was beginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening.  It wouldn’t greatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time.  Indeed, since you have chosen to play the fine hand you held in your own way and scorning my advice, nothing can surprise me.”

She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked down upon him almost disdainfully.

“I have nothing to regret,” she said.

“So every fool says at first.  Nor would you admit it if you had.  You are like that.  You go your own way in spite of advice from older heads.  Death of my life, girl, what do you know of men?”

“I am not complaining,” she reminded him.

“No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have done better to have been guided by your old father.  So long as your Marquis languished for you, there was nothing you could not have done with the fool.  So long as you let him have no more than your fingertips to kiss... ah, name of a name! that was the time to build your future.  If you live to be a thousand you’ll never have such a chance again, and you’ve squandered it, for what?”