"I am surprised that you would keep such a careless assistant, madame. Of course, you will expect to make the loss good to my cousin. It will ruin your trade to keep incompetent employees. It would be better to let the woman go."
"It is a young girl which I have jus' take," said madame, with another shrug. "I have feel for her because she was an orphan, and I take her in ze goodness of my heart. Behold how she repay me! Disappoint my customers, ruin my beesness!"
She was pointing to the stains and working herself up into a passion again, when Miss Balfour interrupted her.
"I should like to see the girl, madame. Will you please call her?"
"Certainement! Willingly, mademoiselle! Ze plaisure shall be yours for to scold ze careless creature."
Cicely heard and shivered. It had been hard enough to bear madame's angry reproaches, but to have the added burden of Miss Balfour's displeasure was more than she could endure—the displeasure of the only one who had smiled on her since she left Marcelle! A moment later madame confronted her, and Rhoda could hear the girl's sobs.
"Oh, I can't go in! Indeed I can't, madame! It nearly kills me to think I have spoiled that lovely dress, and that she cannot go to-night after all. I wouldn't have done it for the world, for it was almost like having her for my friend. She—she smiled at me—the other day."
Rhoda looked at her cousin wonderingly. Could it be some one that she knew, who seemed to care so much about her pleasure?
Then her eyes fell on the shrinking Cicely, whom madame was pushing somewhat unceremoniously into the room. Rhoda saw the little black-gowned figure with the tear-swollen face, and suddenly the crimson spots on her evening gown held a new significance.
It flashed through her mind that the very life-blood of such girls was being sacrificed for her own selfish pleasure. If she had not hurried madame so, there would have been no night-work for this poor child, no fagged-out nerves for her the next day.