Maybelle hurried away, and her next interview was with the letter-carrier for that district. She told him that Florence Fane had gone to New York to live, and had requested her--Miss Maybelle Maury--to receive any letters that might come to her address. He was to deliver them privately to her keeping, that her aunt might not discover the correspondence she was carrying on. The carrier promised compliance. CHAPTER XV. “AS PROUD AND AS PRETTY AS A PRINCESS.” Floy was taken to Mr. Maury’s palatial store, on one of the most prosperous business thoroughfares of New York, and given a position behind the handkerchief counter. Her genial, sunny nature, always looking at the bright side of everything, soon attracted admiring friends among her fellow employés, and made her popular with the elegant customers who patronized the well-known importing house. She was so frank, so pretty, so engaging that it was a pleasure to be waited on by such a girl, who, while eager to please, did not feel abashed by the notice of the stately ladies of the grand Four Hundred, nor permit herself to be patronized by them. She had a rare and graceful dignity, this wild rose of a girl, that repelled insolence and patronage alike. When her fellow salesgirls twitted her on her air of easy independence, declaring that it would give offense, she tossed her shining head and answered, saucily: “Why, I am as good as they are, so why should I cringe to them? Money is the only difference between us.” They laughed at her; but in their hearts they admired her independence, and they said among themselves that there was not a rich girl who came to the store half as pretty and dainty as merry little Floy, in her cheap blue dress that set off to such advantage her flower-like face, and tiny dimpled hands with their exquisite taper fingers. Floy would not own even to herself that she really occupied a very subordinate position in the world, for there was some proud blood in her veins that made her hold her little head high; and, besides, didn’t she know in her heart that she was engaged to the son of a millionaire--the dearest fellow in the world, too, who was coming back in a month to claim her for his happy bride? She said to herself blithely enough that this selling handkerchiefs across a counter was only an episode in her life, brought about by the jealous malice of Miss Maybelle Maury, and that it would soon be over forever. Next year she would be coming to Maury & Co.’s in her own liveried carriage to buy the costly handkerchiefs of web-lace and fine embroidery. How the girls she worked with now would stare and nudge each other with surprise when she appeared! She had a foretaste of this one day when a beautiful, brown-eyed woman sailed up to the counter and set all the clerks whispering to each other. How grand she was, how stately! and her gray gown was a Parisian importation--all the girls knew that, even Floy, though she had been in New York barely a week.