Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/74

64 said in turning away was—"Yes, I am watching you, and I depend upon you to finish him up. Stay there with him—go off with him (I'll give you half an hour if necessary), only settle him once for all. It is very kind of me to give you this chance; and in return for it I expect you to be able to tell me this evening that he has got his answer. Shut him up!"

Francie did not in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious historian to admit that he seemed to her decidedly a brilliant being. In many a girl the sort of appreciation she had of him might easily have been converted by peremptory treatment from outside into something more exalted. I do not misrepresent the perversity of women in saying that our young lady might at this moment have replied to her sister with: "No, I was not in love with him, but somehow since you are so very prohibitive I foresee that I shall be if he asks me." It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie's simplicity of character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order to prove to herself that she was not bullied. She didn't care whether she were bullied or not; and she was perfectly capable of letting her sister believe that she had carried mildness to the point of giving up a man she had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige that large-brained young lady. She was not clear