To Reinette's ears, it all sounded rather like court. Word never spread faster than there. But there was a warmth in Jack's answer that suggested it was somehow not the same at all.

She wondered what that much be like.

"Paris," she answered after a moment. "It has never been anything but Paris. It is all I knew, all I have ever known."

Even after her father left they remained there, despite the scandal that it caused. Her mother refused to leave.

"I was sent to attend school, briefly. At a convent some distance away. But I was not allowed to remain there long."