“He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will go the rounds, you’ll see. What brought me was learning from him that they HAVE got their backs up.” “What on earth are you talking about?” Delia Dosson rang out. Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. “What game are you trying, Miss Delia? It ain’t true YOU care what I wrote, is it?” he pursued, addressing himself again to Francie. After a moment she raised her eyes. “Did you write it yourself?” “What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?” Delia again interposed. “It has done the paper more good than anything--every one’s so interested,” said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. “And you don’t feel you’ve anything to complain of, do you?” he added to Francie kindly. “Do you mean because I told you?” “Why certainly. Didn’t it all spring out of that lovely drive and that walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait? Didn’t you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow’s new picture, and about you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie,” Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, “you regularly TALKED as if you did.” “Did I talk a great deal?” asked Francie. “Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don’t you remember when we sat there in the Bois?” “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.”