hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had
made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as
evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence.
Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance
had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible
but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his
having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to
the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure
which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking
from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a
loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl
was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable
likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still and
scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called
animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy
lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick
movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible
life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most
usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been
said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have
improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness
would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm the
implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a
newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her
neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her
dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in her
face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and
inconceivabilities of ignorance.

Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young