“Oh rubbish!” Delia panted.
“Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed.”
“And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh,” he reminded her—“it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she’s scandalised now—she and all the rest of them—at the sight of their names at last in a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it’s a bigger pose than ever, and, as I said just now, it’s too damned cheap. It’s THIN—that’s what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn’t count. They pretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it first-rate.”
“Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn’t that dead and buried days and days ago?” Delia quavered afresh. She hovered there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson’s part was unnatural and alarming; and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he want to drag them down again to such commonness—ah she felt the commonness now!—even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn’t answer one of their questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn’t been afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly pleased she should be if he wouldn’t put in his oar. She felt liberated, however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a sure proof of the state of her sister’s spirit.
“Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your father has told me?” Mr. Flack enquired. “I don’t mean it was he gave me the tip; I guess I’ve seen enough over here by this time to have worked it out. They’re scandalised all right—they’re blue with horror and have never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie,” her visitor roared, “that ain’t good enough for you and me. They know what’s in the papers every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain’t like the fellow in the story—who was he?—who couldn’t think how the apples got into the dumplings. They’re just grabbing a pretext to break because—because, well, they don’t think you’re blue blood. They’re delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they’re all cackling over the egg it has taken so many hens of ‘em to lay. That’s MY diagnosis if you want to know.”
“Oh—how can you say such a thing?” Francie returned with a tremor in her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia’s at the same moment, and this young woman’s heart bounded with the sense that she was safe. Mr. Flack’s power to hustle presumed too far—though Mr. Dosson had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking—and it seemed to her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit.
“What does it matter what he says, my dear?” she interposed. “Do make him drop the subject—he’s talking very wild. I’m going down to see what poppa means—I never heard of anything so flat!” At the door she paused a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: “Now just wipe him out, mind!” It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted out.
As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. “Now look here, you’re not going back on me, are you?”
“Going back on you—what do you mean?”
“Ain’t we together in this thing? WHY sure! We’re CLOSE together, Miss Francie!”