e. But she sat
there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the
first indeed to turn again to 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?" she made answer with cold
gaiety. But she added more familiarly: "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 suffers
everything."

"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia," the young man ventured
to declare. "You don't suffer much."

"No, for Francie I'm all there. I guess I could act for her."

He had a pause. "You act for her too much. If it wasn't for you I think
I could do something."

"Well, you've got to kill me first!" Delia Dosson replied.

"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on.

But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want."

"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs."

"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I," said the girl.
"But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours."

"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried George
Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young
journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced 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, in which the eyes were 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 her natural portion,
and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To
a casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted
themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed how
little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances
of Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself,