self disgraced
by such bankruptcy. Not that she feared it. Nature had started her
with a sufficient capital of fascination, and at Mrs. Downey's she
had, so to speak, established a connection. And now it seemed there
had come a period of depression. It still rained tickets, more tickets
than ever, but there was no Mr. Rickman to escort her to the concert
or the play; Mr. Rickman always had another engagement, never
specified. No Mr. Rickman to take her into the suburbs on a Sunday;
Mr. Rickman was off, goodness knew where, scouring the country on his
bicycle. No Mr. Rickman to talk to her at dinner; Mr. Rickman took all
his meals in his own room now. For these and all other delinquencies
his invariable excuse was that he was busy; and Flossie, mind you, was
sharp enough to see through _that_.

No. Mr. Rickman had changed, suddenly, unaccountably, without a
moment's warning. First of all, the other boarders noticed that he had
become most frightfully irritable in his temper. He had not been over
polite to any of them lately, but to her he was insufferably rude,
most ungentlemanly, she called it. He would pretend not to see her if
by any chance she looked his way, not to hear her if by any chance she
spoke to him. Once (they were quite alone) he had broken off in the
middle of an exciting conversation and rushed out of the room, out of
the house. She saw him over the balcony railings, walking up and down
the street like a lunatic, with his hands thrust down into his pockets
and no hat on. And he was not only ungentlemanly but positively
unkind. If they met on the stairs (somehow they did this very often)
he would draw himself up flat against the wall as if he was afraid of
the frill of her dress touching him. If she came into the drawing-room
he would walk out of it; or if he stayed, it was only to sit staring
at her (poor innocent little Flossie, who was so pretty) with an ugly
scowl on his face. There were times when poor innocent little Flossie
said to herself that she positively believed he hated her. And she was
so innocent that she couldn't think what she had done to make him hate
her.

She was right about the hatred. An indignant anger was certainly what
he felt when he first realized that she had power to make him feel at
all. Her prettiness tormented him; therefore he hated her, and
everything about her. He hated the sound of her little tongue upraised
among the boarders, and of her little feet running up and d