When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with his father’s request by returning to the room in which the old man habitually¹ sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. “Of course you’ll continue to live with me. You’ll understand that I don’t consent to your going away. You’ll have the rooms occupied at first by Susan and Alphonse.”

Gaston noted³ with pleasure the transition from the conditional⁴ to the future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things — of man, of institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly⁵, with the lamplight shining on his refined old head and embroidered⁶ dressing-gown. He had used of old to be out every night in the week — Gaston was perfectly⁷ aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little frivolous⁸. He was essentially⁹ a social creature and indeed — except perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany — they were all social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities¹⁰ with a society of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons¹¹, slightly

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