“The Madame? the Madame?” she repeated in low, agitated tones, dropping into a chair in the luxuriously-furnished parlor, but with no thought of its richly-carved, costly wood and velvet cushions. “My aunt must be visiting here. But ’twas for the Madame he asked, ’twas the Madame he wished to see! Can it be that she—she is— Yes, it must—it is!”
She hid her face in her hands, with a slight shudder and something between a groan and a sigh.
The poor Madame had never been an attractive person to Floy; she was not one whom she could greatly respect or look up to for comfort in sorrow, for guidance in times of doubt and perplexity.
In finding her she had not found one who would at all fill the place of the parents she mourned, and whose loss had left her without an earthly counsellor, an earthly prop.
In the bitterness of her disappointment she learned how much she had been half unconsciously hoping for. The pressure of poverty had been sorely felt by the young girl during these past months, but was as nothing to the yearning for the tender love and care and happy trustfulness that had been the crowning blessing of earlier days.
CHAPTER XXX.
PANSY.
“A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,