Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/209

Rh hovered there in a fever of irritation, fidgeted by the revelation that her father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost like a treachery because it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming; and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the responsibility of it by not having come up, at such a moment, with Mr. Flack. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he want to slide back to a common, though active, young man? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward with a shallow extemporised optimism as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she had not been afraid that something still more complicating than anything that had happened yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him she should be very much obliged to him if he wouldn't meddle. She felt liberated however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a quick indication of her sister's present emotion.

"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your father has told me?" Mr. Flack inquired. "I don't mean that he suggested the interpretation, but my own knowledge of the world (as the world is constituted over here!)