the present no
further explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if
it however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announced
undertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in the
personage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we have
smuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson's attention
was founded on a conception of Mr. Flack's intrinsic brilliancy. Would
his own impression have justified that?--would he have found such a
conception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would
saddle me with the care of showing what right our officious observer
might have had to his particular standard. Let us therefore simply
note that George Flack had grounds for looming publicly large to
an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as she supposed, with
literature, and wasn't a sympathy with literature one of the many
engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little sister? If
Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn't a trail of forgotten
Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? The
elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but
usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She considered
however that as a family they had an intellectual link with the young
journalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the advantage
of his acquaintance questioned.

Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a
prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they
might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before.
And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no
ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't conveniently
have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that
you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind
you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even
aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group:
aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded
him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson,
in whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or
advertisement, the air of representing a "line of goods" for which there
is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be
individually designated: a number, like that of the day's newspa