the same great
factory roof, in the same human hive, that he might at any moment
pass through the room. That, however, she did not think very likely.
She fancied the Lloyds seldom went through the departments, which
were in charge of foremen. Mr. Norman Lloyd was at the mountains
with his wife, she knew. They left Robert in charge, and he would
have enough to do in the office. She looked at the grimy men working
around her, and she thought of the elegant young fellow, and the
utter incongruity of her being among them seemed so great as to
preclude the possibility of it. She had said to herself when she
thought of obtaining work in Lloyd's that she need not hesitate
about it on account of Robert. She had heard her father say that the
elder Lloyd almost never came in contact with the men, that
everything was done through the foremen. She reasoned that it would
be the same with the younger Lloyd. But all at once the girl at her
side gave her a violent nudge, which did not interrupt for a second
her own flying fingers.

"Say," she said, "ain't he handsome?"

Ellen glanced over her shoulder and saw Robert Lloyd coming down
between the lines of workmen. Then she turned to her work, and her
fingers slipped and bungled, her ears rang. He passed without
speaking.

Mamie Brady openly stared after him. "He's awful handsome, and an
awful swell, but he's awful stuck up, just like the old boss," said
she. "He never notices any of us, and acts as if he was afraid we'd
poison him. My, what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," said Ellen.

"You look white as a sheet; ain't you well?"

Ellen turned upon her with sudden fury. She had something of the
blood of the violent Louds and of her hot-tempered grandmother. She
had stood everything from this petty, insistent tormentor.

"Yes, I am well," she replied, "and I will thank you to let me
alone, and let me do my work, and do your own."

The other girl stared at her a minute with curiously expressive,
uplifted eyebrows.

"Whew!" she said, in a half whistle then, and went on with her work,
and did not speak again.

Ellen was thankful that Robert Lloyd had not spoken to her in the
factory, and yet she was cut to the quick by it. It fulfilled her
anticipations to the letter. "I was right," she said to herself; "he
can never think of me again. He is showing it." Somehow, after he
had passed, her enthusiasm, born of a strong imagination, and her
breadth of nature failed her somewh