"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on.

But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want."

"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs."

"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I," said the girl.
"But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours."

"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried George
Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young
journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present
for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to
give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at
there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the
other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on
the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly
passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five
years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart.
Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and
colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear
shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion,
and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To
a casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted
themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed how
little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances
of Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself,
in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked
for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig