“There! You see!” she screamed. “You miserable creature! He’s gone! He’s gone!”
Frances looked at her severely.
“You’ve spoiled everything!” she went on. “How did you dare to laugh at him? What right have you to laugh at him! You’re nothing better than a servant. And he belongs to one of the finest families in Hamburg. His father’s worth nearly half a million. He’s been through Heidelberg. And you dare to laugh at him! Who are you, anyway? A big, gawky fool of a girl.... Picking up a man in the street and bringing him into my house.... He’s shocked at you.”
And so on, in the strain that so sickened and dismayed Frances.
“He laughs at you. He says you’re a clumsy, ignorant——” ... All manner of dirty insolence.
The heart of the trouble was there, that Frances had laughed at him. He could forget his anger against the Englishman, but he could not stomach being laughed at by a pretty girl. He had said horrible things about her, which Miss Eppendorfer had treasured up and now repeated, with greater malice because she dimly perceived that in his hatred for Frances there was more than a little lust.
Against this attack Frances was defenceless. There was nothing in her nature, nothing in her training, to arm her. She stood up very straight, very proud, but tears were running down her cheeks. She waited until every one of the dreadful words had been said, and the speaker had flung out of the room, then she set to work to pack her little trunk with furious energy, cramming everything in, wishing only to be gone forever from that place. In hat and jacket, she went out into the hall and telephoned for a taxi.
The driver came up after her trunk; he was just dragging it along the hall to put it into the lift, when Miss Eppendorfer came rushing out, in a kimono, her face raddled and tear-blistered, her wisps of hair in a wild tangle.
“No! No!” she screamed. “Stop! Frances!”
Her voice reverberated shockingly in the stone corridor. The lift boy and the chauffeur stared at her. Frances felt ready to faint.