If this remark was on her visitor’s part the sign of a rare assurance the girl’s cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she even smiled; then she replied: “Oh yes I do—only not so much.”
“They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they’d have disgusted you. I don’t care—even a little sympathy will do: whatever you’ve got left.” He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had nothing for; so he went on: “There was no obligation for you to answer my questions—you might have shut me up that day with a word.”
“Really?” she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. “I thought I HAD to—for fear I should appear ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful?”
“Why to you—after what you had done. Don’t you remember that it was you who introduced us—?” And she paused with a fatigued delicacy.
“Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg your pardon—I haven’t THAT on my conscience!” Mr. Flack quite grandly declared.
“Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to—to his friends,” she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the inexactness caused by her magnanimity. “That’s why I thought I ought to tell you what you’d like.”
“Why, do you suppose if I’d known where that first visit of ours to Waterlow was going to bring you out I’d have taken you within fifty miles—?” He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: “Jerusalem, there’s no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?”
“Never mind what I told them.”
“Miss Francie,” said George Flack, “if you’ll marry me I’ll never ask a question again. I’ll go into some other business.”