found such a conception contagious? I forbear to say positively no, for that would charge me with the large responsibility of showing what right our accidental observer might have had to his particular standard. I prefer therefore to note simply that George Flack was quite clever enough to seem a person of importance to Delia Dosson. He was connected (as she supposed) with literature, and was not literature one of the many engaging attributes of her cherished little sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: had not a trail of forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? The elder sister grabbed them up on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She considered, however, that as a family they had a sort of superior affinity with the young journalist, and would have been surprised if she had been told that his acquaintance was not a high advantage.
Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a prejudice on the part of those who looked at him: whoever they might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no ability to remember—that is to recall—him: you could not have evoked him in advance, and it was only when you saw him that you knew you had seen him. To carry him in your mind you must have
