"I mean Mr. Rignold," she added,
amid everyone's laughter and her own desperate confusion.
Florence's laughter rang out as gaily as anyone's, and apparently
as unaffectedly, and she rallied Cassie with much good humour on
her slip.
"So it's Frank already!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Miss Derwent! don't
you trust this wicked chief of mine. He is a regular heart-
breaker!"
Cassie cried when Frank and she returned home and sat together on
the porch.
"She's a proud, haughty minx," she burst out, "and you love her--
and as for me I might as well drown myself."
Frank attempted to comfort her.
"Oh, you needn't try to blind me," she said bitterly. "I--I
thought it was a girl in America, Frank, a girl like me--just
common and poor and perhaps not as nice as I am. And you know she
wouldn't wipe her feet on you," she went on viciously--"she so
grand with her yachts and her counts and 'Oh, I think I'll run
over to Injya for the winter, or maybe it's Cairo or the Nile,'
says she! What kind of a chance have you got there, Frank, you in
your greasy over-alls and working for her wages? Won't you break
your heart just like I am breaking mine, I that would sell the
clothes off my back for you and follow you all over the world!"
Frank protested that she was mistaken; that it wasn't Miss Fenacre
at all; that it was absurd to even think of such a thing.
"Oh, Frank, it's bad enough as it is without your lying to me,"
she said, quite unconvinced.
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