Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/190

180 every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If there was anything in that style they might talk," he said; and he scanned the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with the text was to depress Delia, who did not exactly see what there was in it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some points they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous places—the things that had thrown the Proberts into a state. But why should they be in a state if other people didn't understand the allusions—they were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible—any better than she did? The whole thing struck Francie as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brécourt's account of it, and the part about herself and her portrait seemed to make even less of the subject than it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it would not be because they had published too much about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things that she had not told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many that she had: perhaps these were the things that that lady had put in—Florine or Dorine—the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brécourt's.

All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator gave them at the hotel less of a