Chapter 14 - Page 2

unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure deepened Mr.
Dosson's dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said
to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a
personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with
Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This
haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication
of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson's nature was
the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be
ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and that if they hadn't
done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people's
knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, still
in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "He
says that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason that
if you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you want
the people with you, you've got to be with the people."

"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think the
Proberts are with us much."

"Oh he doesn't mean them," said Mr. Dosson.

"Well, I do!" cried Delia.

At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston
insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn't say that he
might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this
idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly
cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour
uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular
occasion for that when he talked about "preferred bonds" with her
father. This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she had
heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson,
records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson
pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he
guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach
but little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude which Delia
perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia
understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a great
deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had
committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements
an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestic
habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging
provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled
off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them
services in