"The counter; my counter!" shouted Will blusterously. "You know very well what I mean. Your wife has told you all about it."
Rosamund flushed, and could not raise her eyes.
"We didn't know," said Franks, with his nervous little laugh, "whether you cared—to talk about it—"
"I'll talk about it with any one you like. So you do know? That's all right. I still owe my apology to Mrs. Franks for having given her such a shock. The disclosure was really too sudden."
"It is I who should beg you to forgive me, Mr. Warburton," replied Rosamund, in her sweetest accents. "I behaved in a very silly way. But my friend Bertha Cross treated me as I deserved. She declared that she was ashamed of me. But do not, pray do not, think me worse than I was. I ran away really because I felt I had surprised a secret. I was embarrassed,—I lost my head. I'm sure you don't think me capable of really mean feelings?"
"But, old man," put in the artist, in a half pained voice, "what the deuce does it all mean? Tell us the whole story, do."
Will told it, jestingly, effectively.
"I was quite sure," sounded, at the close, in Rosamund's voice of tender sympathy, "that you had some noble motive. I said so at once to Bertha."
"I suppose," said Will, "Miss Cross will never dare to enter the shop again?"
"She doesn't come!"