There was a moment’s silence and then they looked up at each other. “I have an idea you don’t want me,” said George Flack.

“Oh, yes, I do—as a friend.”

“Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man, that’s the meanest!” he exclaimed.

“Where’s the meanness, when I suppose you are not so peculiar as to wish to be anything more!”

“More to your sister, do you mean—or to yourself?”

“My sister is myself—I haven’t got any other,” said Delia Dosson.

“Any other sister?”

“Don’t be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?” the girl went on.

“Well, I forget which one I was in.”

“Why, something to do with that newspaper—don’t you remember?”

“Yes, but it isn’t that paper any more—it’s a different one.”

“Do you go round for news—in the same way?”

“Well, I try to get the people what they want. It’s hard work,” said the young man.

“Well, I suppose if you didn’t some one else would. They will have it, won’t they?”

“Yes, they will have it.” But the wants of the people did not appear at the present moment to interest Mr. Flack as much as his own. He looked at his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn’t seem to have much authority.

“Much authority?” the girl repeated.

“With Miss Francie. She is taking her time, or rather, I mean, she is taking mine.”

“Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of that.”

“All right: I’ll give her all I have.” And Miss Dosson’s interlocutor leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as if to let his companion know that she would have to count with his patience. But she sat there in her expressionless placidity, giving no sign of alarm or defeat. He was the first indeed to show a symptom of restlessness: at the end of a few moments he asked the young lady if she didn’t suppose her father had told her sister who it was.

“Do you think that’s all that’s required?” Miss Dosson demanded. But she added, more graciously—“Probably that’s the reason. She’s so shy.”

“Oh, yes—she used to look it.”

“No, that’s her peculiarity, that she never looks it, and yet she is intensely so.”

“Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia,” the young man ventured to declare.

“No, for her, I’m not shy—not in the least.”

“If it wasn’t for you I think I could do something,” the young man went on.

“Well, you’ve got to kill me first!”

“I’ll come down on you, somehow, in the Reverberator,” said George Flack.

“Oh, that’s not what the people want.”

“No, unfortunately they don’t care anything about my affairs.”

“Well, we do: we are kinder, Francie and I,” said the girl. “But we desire to keep them quite distinct from ours.”

“Oh, yours—yours: if I could only discover what they are!” the young journalist exclaimed. And during the rest of the time that they sat there waiting he tried to find out. If an auditor had happened to be present for the quarter of an hour that elapsed and had had any attention to give to these vulgar young persons he would have wondered perhaps at there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the other—wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five years old and had a large white face, with the eyes very far apart. Her forehead was high, but her mouth was small: her hair was light and colourless, and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been conferred upon her by Nature, and the Bon Marché and other establishments had to make up for that. To a feminine eye they would scarcely have appeared to have acquitted themselves of their office; but even a woman would not have guessed how little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances of Paris could not make her look different, and she held them, for herself, in no manner of esteem. It was a plain, blank face, not only without movement, but with a suggestion of obstinacy in its repose; and yet, with its limitations, it was neither stupid nor displeasing. It had an air of intelligent calm—a considering, pondering look that was superior, somehow, to diffidence or anxiety; moreover, the girl had a clear skin and a gentle, dim smile. If she had been a young man (and she had, a little, the head of one) it would probably have been thought of her that she nursed dreams of eminence in some scientific or even political line.

An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack’s acquaintance with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before and in some slight association immediately after disembarking; but that each party had come and gone a good deal since then—come and gone however without meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it was not, as he called it, the same old visit. She did not repudiate the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a suburban portion of it: she confessed that, as Bostonians, they had been capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer—ever so much: what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European sojourn of which the limits were not to be told.