who was sitting in the back or "steerage" seat.
"Oh, he be darned!" said the driver impatiently. "HE is no account; he's
only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I'm talkin' of the coolie gang."
But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps
of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself
up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered
was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and
circumstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having
passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste.
The pretty, flushed but defiant face of Cissy that afternoon haunted
him; he had not known the immediate cause of it, but made no doubt that
she had already heard the news of her father's disgrace when he met
her. He regretted now that he hadn't spoken to her, if only a few formal
words of sympathy. He had always been half tenderly amused at her frank
conceit and her "airs,"--the innocent, undisguised pride of the country
belle, so different from the hard aplomb of the city girl! And now the
foolish little moth, dancing in the sunshine of prosperity, had felt the
chill of winter in its pretty wings. The contempt he had for the father
had hitherto shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud
of her father's position and what it brought her. In the revelation that
his own directors had availed themselves of that father's methods, and
the ignoble character of his present mission, he felt a stirring of
self-reproach. What would become of her? Of course, frivolous as she
was, she would not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another,
nor yet rise superior to it. She would succumb for the present, to
revive another season in a dimmer glory elsewhere. His critical, cynical
observation of her had determined that any filial affection she
might have would be merged and lost in the greater deprivation of her
position.
A sudden darkening of the landscape below, and a singular opaque
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