to choose between us, and when it comes to that
he'll never choose me."

"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean--if you're going
to identify yourself so with HIM!"

"Oh I wish he'd never been born!" Francie wailed; after which she
suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going
to bed, and her sister took her off to her room.

Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter's bedside,
read the dreadful "piece" out to both his children from the copy of the
Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact
that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in
which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their
resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering
effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and
their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as a
natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it.
The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty," highly calculated to
please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned
Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren't aware over here of the charges
brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If there
was anything in that style they might talk," he said; and he scanned
the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some
imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with
the text was to depress Delia, who didn't exactly see what there was in
it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some
points they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous
places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should
they have minded if other people didn't understand the allusions (these
were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did?
The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than
Mme. de Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situation
and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than
it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr.
Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too much
about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of
things SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had:
perhaps those were the things that