Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/43

Rh wasn't in the least what she wanted. She amplified this statement very soon—at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. Flack's designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia's vision of the danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely connected (and this was natural) with the idea of an "engagement": this idea was in a manner complete in itself—her imagination failed in the oddest way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged but she wanted her not at all to be married, and she had not clearly made up her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the promotion and the arrest. It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows: if her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind—a dim theory that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia's conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives and above all of being spoken of as engaged; and it never occurred to her that a repetition of lovers rubs off a young lady's delicacy. She felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own—he would have been dreadfully