"Is it possible he has proposed for her, and she will not accept him?" thought the mother; and then she drew her proud little head up, and a feeling of indignation filled her heart. If Florence was going to treat her boy, the very light of her eyes, cruelly, she certainly need expect no mercy from his mother.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
AN ADMIRABLE ARRANGEMENT.
Trevor took his departure, and the gay throng at Mrs. Simpson's laughed and joked and made merry.
Florence had now worked herself into apparent high spirits. She ceased to care whether she talked rubbish or not. She was no longer silent. Many people asked to be introduced to the rising star, and many people congratulated her. Instead of being modest, and a little stupid and retiring, she now answered back badinage with flippant words of her own. Her cleverness was such an established fact that her utter nonsense was received as wit, and she soon had throngs of men and women round her laughing at her words and privately taking note of them.
Franks all the while stood as a sort of bodyguard. He listened, and his cool judgment never wavered for a moment.
"I must give her a hint," he said to himself; "she requires training. That sort of sparkling, effervescent nonsense is in itself in as bad taste and is as poor as the essay she sent me when she played her great practical joke. She is playing a practical joke now on these people, leading them to believe that her chaff is wit."
He came up to her gravely in a pause in the conversation, and asked her if she would like to go in to supper. She laid her hand on his arm, and they threaded their way through the throng. They did not approach the supper-room, however. Franks led her into a small alcove just beside the greenhouse.