Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/140

130 now a luxurious coach at their command) driving away to the dressmaker's, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the progress of her sister's wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in composition; she wrote slowly and in addressing her lover had a painful sense of literary responsibility. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she shut herself up that way she poured forth wonderful pages—it was part of her high cultivation. At any rate, when George Flack was ushered in she was still bending over her blotting-book on one of the gilded tables and there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty to Gaston but only at the most a sense of weariness in regard to the epistolary form that made her glad to see her visitor. She didn't know how to finish her letter; but Mr. Flack seemed in a manner to terminate it.

"I wouldn't have ventured to propose this, but I guess I can do with it, now it's come," the young man announced.

"What can you do with?" she asked, wiping her pen.

"Well this happy chance. Just you and me together."

"I don't know what it's a chance for."

"Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It makes me so to see you look so happy."

"It makes you miserable?"