Juliette Ives was as much in love with the handsome young gentleman as Pansy herself, and she sneered at the factory girl in her cheap lawns and ginghams.
“Actually setting herself up as an equal among her aunt’s boarders,” she said disdainfully. “I mean to put her down at once, and let her know that we do not desire her company.”
So she boldly asked Pansy if she could hire her to do the washing for her mother and herself.
“I am not a servant,” Pansy answered, flushing angrily.
“You are a factory girl, aren’t you?” disdainfully.
“Yes, but not a servant.”
“I don’t see much difference,” said the rich girl insolently; and from that moment the two were open enemies.
Juliette Ives knew in her own heart that her spiteful actions had been the outcome of jealousy because Norman Wylde had looked so admiringly at Pansy when he first met her, and Pansy was quick enough to understand the truth.
“She is in love with him, and is jealous of me, in spite of my poverty and my lonely position. Very well, I’ll pay her back for her scorn, if I can,” she resolved, with girlish pique.
And as she possessed beauty equal to, if not greater than, Juliette’s blond charms, and was fairly well educated and intelligent, she had some advantages, at least, with which to enter the lists with the aristocratic belle who scorned her so openly.