Warm partisan of immortal justice, when it was lucky enough to be backed by her affections, Miss Vizard rose directly after dinner, and, with a fine imitation of ardor, said she could lose no more time—she must go and put on her bonnet. “You will come with me, Fanny?”
When I was a girl, or a boy—I forget which, it is so long ago—a young lady thus invited by an affectionate friend used to do one of two things; nine times out of ten she sacrificed her inclination, and went; the tenth, she would make sweet, engaging excuses, and beg off. But the girls of this day have invented “silent volition.” When you ask them to do anything they don't quite like, they look you in the face, bland but full, and neither speak nor move. Miss Dover was a proficient in this graceful form of refusal by dead silence, and resistance by placid inertia. She just looked like the full moon in Zoe's face, and never budged. Zoe, being also a girl of the day, needed no interpretation. “Oh, very well,” said she, “disobliging thing!”—with perfect good humor, mind you.
Vizard, however, was not pleased.
“You go with her, Ned,” said he. “Miss Dover prefers to stay and smoke a cigar with me.”
Miss Dover's face reddened, but she never budged. And it ended in Zoe taking Severne with her to call on Rhoda Gale.
Rhoda Gale stayed in the garden till sunset, and then went to her lodgings slowly, for they had no attraction—a dark room; no supper; a hard landlady, half disposed to turn her out.
Dr. Rhoda Gale never reflected much in the streets; they were to her a field of minute observation; but, when she got home she sat down and thought over what she had been saying and doing, and puzzled over the character of the man who had relieved her hunger and elicited her autobiography. She passed him in review; settled in her mind that he was a strong character; a manly man, who did not waste words; wondered a little at the way he had made her do whatever he pleased; blushed a little at the thought of having been so communicative; yet admired the man for having drawn her out so; and wondered whether she should see him again. She hoped she should. But she did not feel sure.
She sat half an hour thus—with one knee raised a little, and her hands interlaced—by a fire-place with a burned-out coal in it; and by-and-by she felt hungry again. But she had no food, and no money.
She looked hard at her ring, and profited a little by contact with the sturdy good sense of Vizard.
She said to herself, “Men understand one another. I believe father would be angry with me for not.”