But St. George Beresford did not turn to meet her gaze, and Otho said, sneeringly:
“Beresford has been struck dumb by the sight of a beauty on a bicycle.”
“A beauty?” frowningly.
“Yes. Little Fly-away Floy.”
“Nonsense, she is no beauty, only a mischievous little hoiden! Don’t let her turn your head, Mr. Beresford; she isn’t in our set at all. Her father is a mechanic, and her mother a seamstress.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, carelessly, turning around and flashing her a bright, quizzical glance, in which he seemed to dismiss the thought of Florence Fane.
He was very proud, and did not wish her to know that he had been fascinated by one so far below him in social position.
But Maybelle had equivocated, and she hoped ardently that he would not find it out.
A flavor of romance and mystery hung around Florence Fane’s origin.
John Banks, the kind-hearted carpenter, had taken the sobbing child nine years ago from the side of her dead mother and carried her home to his childless wife, who, because Floy seemed to have no kith or kin, had taken her into her heart and called her daughter, and both lavished a world of tenderness on the seven-year-old child. But save in nobility of nature and a tender heart, she was no more like the homely pair than a restless humming-bird is like a toiling honey-bee. She was rarely, exquisitely beautiful, lovable after an imperious fashion, but willful and untamable in disposition, the result of spoiling by a too fond and overindulgent mother, who at the last had deserted her by fleeing from life’s pains and penalties by the forbidden path of suicide.