but a staunch friend of the people. I guessed that your muslin frock would be clean, and that there would still be some tell-tale lace upon it."
She laughed again, and with delicate fingers lifted her pretty muslin frock, displaying a white frou-frou of flounces beneath the hem.
"How careless and childish!" he said, almost roughly.
"Would you have me coarse and grimy to be a fitting match for your partisans?" she retorted.
His tone of mentor nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her childish merriment quickly gave place to a feeling of unexplainable disappointment.
"I humbly beg your pardon," he said quietly. "And must crave your kind indulgence for my mood: but I have been so anxious"
"Why should you be anxious about me?"
She had meant to say this indifferently, as if caring little what the reply might be: but in her effort to seem indifferent her voice became haughty, a reminiscence of the days when she still was the daughter of the Duc de Marny, the richest and most high-born heiress in France.
"Was that presumptuous?" he asked, with a slight touch of irony, in response to her own hauteur.
