XIII

Summary

MR. DOSSON, as we know, was meditative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side of his nature, especially as, so far at least as the observation of his daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his meditations did engender an act which was not perceived by these young ladies, though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself—and also to ask Delia— questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to demand. At first he was to be blown up for the mess he had got them into (profitless as the process might be and vain the satisfaction); he was to be visited with the harshest chastisement that the sense of violated confidence could inflict. Now he was simply to be dropped, to be cut, to be let alone to his dying day: the girl quickly recognised that this was a much more distinguished way of showing displeasure. It was in this manner that she characterised it, in her frequent conversations with her father, if that can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while she poured forth arguments which combined both variety and repetition. The same cause will produce consequences the most diverse: a truth according to which the catastrophe that made Delia express freely the hope that she might never again see so much as the end of Mr. Flack's nose had just the opposite effect upon her father. The one thing he wanted positively to do at present was to let his eyes travel over his young friend's whole person: it seemed to him that that would really make him feel better.