Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/201

Rh Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again under cover of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a strained interpretation, but that did not prevent Delia from placing it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he should remark, in return, that he didn't see what good it could do Mr. Flack that Francie—and he and Delia, for all he could guess—should be disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way of reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though she couldn't explain—and at any rate she didn't want the manœuvring creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to know that there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published or didn't publish: above all she didn't want him to know that the Proberts had cooled off. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was the oddest secret complacency of reflection that in consequence of what Mr. Flack had published the great American community was in a position to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped that some of the people who used to call on them when they were "off to-morrow" would take the lesson to heart.

While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment for which it was required