He bowed and withdrew.
Alban rose to follow him--and checked himself.
"No," he thought, "I trust Emily!" He sat down again by Cecilia"s side.
Mirabel had indeed returned to the rose garden. He found Emily employed as he had left her, in making a crown of roses, to be worn by Cecilia in the evening. But, in one other respect, there was a change. Francine was present.
"Excuse me for sending you on a needless errand," Emily said to Mirabel; "Miss de Sor tells me Mr. Morris has finished his sketch. She left him in the drawing-room--why didn"t you bring him here?"
"He was talking with Miss Wyvil."
Mirabel answered absently--with his eyes on Francine. He gave her one of those significant looks, which says to a third person, "Why are you here?" Francine"s jealousy declined to understand him. He tried a broader hint, in words.
"Are you going to walk in the garden?" he said.
Francine was impenetrable. "No," she answered, "I am going to stay here with Emily."
Mirabel had no choice but to yield. Imperative anxieties forced him to say, in Francine"s presence, what he had hoped to say to Emily privately.
"When I joined Miss Wyvil and Mr. Morris," he began, "what do you think they were doing? They were talking of--Miss Jethro."
Emily dropped the rose-crown on her lap. It was easy to see that she had been disagreeably surprised.
"Mr. Morris has told me the curious story of Miss Jethro"s visit,"
Mirabel continued; "but I am in some doubt whether he has spoken to me without reserve. Perhaps he expressed himself more freely when he spoke to _you_. Miss Jethro may have said something to him which tended to lower me in your estimation?"
"Certainly not, Mr. Mirabel--so far as I know. If I had heard anything of the kind, I should have thought it my duty to tell you. Will it relieve your anxiety, if I go at once to Mr. Morris, and ask him plainly whether he has concealed anything from you or from me?"
Mirabel gratefully kissed her hand. "Your kindness overpowers me," he said--speaking, for once, with true emotion.
Emily immediately returned to the house. As soon as she was out of sight, Francine approached Mirabel, trembling with suppressed rage.
CHAPTER XLVI. PRETENDING.
Miss de Sor began cautiously with an apology. "Excuse me, Mr. Mirabel, for reminding you of my presence."
Mr. Mirabel made no reply.
"I beg to say," Francine proceeded, "that I didn"t intentionally see you kiss Emily"s hand."
Mirabel stood, looking at the roses which Emily had left on her chair, as completely absorbed in his own thoughts as if he had been alone in the garden.
"Am I not even worth notice?" Francine asked. "Ah, I know to whom I am indebted for your neglect!" She took him familiarly by the arm, and burst into a harsh laugh. "Tell me now, in confidence--do you think Emily is fond of you?"
The impression left by Emily"s kindness was still fresh in Mirabel"s memory: he was in no humor to submit to the jealous resentment of a woman whom he regarded with perfect indifference. Through the varnish of politeness which overlaid his manner, there rose to the surface the underlying insolence, hidden, on all ordinary occasions, from all human eyes. He answered Francine--mercilessly answered her--at last.
"It is the dearest hope of my life that she may be fond of me," he said.
Francine dropped his arm "And fortune favors your hopes," she added, with an ironical a.s.sumption of interest in Mirabel"s prospects. "When Mr. Morris leaves us to-morrow, he removes the only obstacle you have to fear. Am I right?"
"No; you are wrong."
"In what way, if you please?"
"In this way. I don"t regard Mr. Morris as an obstacle. Emily is too delicate and too kind to hurt his feelings--she is not in love with him.
There is no absorbing interest in her mind to divert her thoughts from me. She is idle and happy; she thoroughly enjoys her visit to this house, and I am a.s.sociated with her enjoyment. There is my chance--!"
He suddenly stopped. Listening to him thus far, unnaturally calm and cold, Francine now showed that she felt the lash of his contempt. A hideous smile pa.s.sed slowly over her white face. It threatened the vengeance which knows no fear, no pity, no remorse--the vengeance of a jealous woman. Hysterical anger, furious language, Mirabel was prepared for. The smile frightened him.
"Well?" she said scornfully, "why don"t you go on?"
A bolder man might still have maintained the audacious position which he had a.s.sumed. Mirabel"s faint heart shrank from it. He was eager to shelter himself under the first excuse that he could find. His ingenuity, paralyzed by his fears, was unable to invent anything new. He feebly availed himself of the commonplace trick of evasion which he had read of in novels, and seen in action on the stage.
"Is it possible," he asked, with an overacted a.s.sumption of surprise, "that you think I am in earnest?"
In the case of any other person, Francine would have instantly seen through that flimsy pretense. But the love which accepts the meanest crumbs of comfort that can be thrown to it--which fawns and grovels and deliberately deceives itself, in its own intensely selfish interests--was the love that burned in Francine"s breast. The wretched girl believed Mirabel with such an ecstatic sense of belief that she trembled in every limb, and dropped into the nearest chair.
"_I_ was in earnest," she said faintly. "Didn"t you see it?"
He was perfectly shameless; he denied that he had seen it, in the most positive manner. "Upon my honor, I thought you were mystifying me, and I humored the joke."
She sighed, and looking at him with an expression of tender reproach. "I wonder whether I can believe you," she said softly.
"Indeed you may believe me!" he a.s.sured her.
She hesitated--for the pleasure of hesitating. "I don"t know. Emily is very much admired by some men. Why not by you?"
"For the best of reasons," he answered "She is poor, and I am poor.
Those are facts which speak for themselves."
"Yes--but Emily is bent on attracting you. She would marry you to-morrow, if you asked her. Don"t attempt to deny it! Besides, you kissed her hand."
"Oh, Miss de Sor!"
"Don"t call me "Miss de Sor"! Call me Francine. I want to know why you kissed her hand."
He humored her with inexhaustible servility. "Allow me to kiss _your_ hand, Francine!--and let me explain that kissing a lady"s hand is only a form of thanking her for her kindness. You must own that Emily--"
She interrupted him for the third time. "Emily?" she repeated. "Are you as familiar as that already? Does she call you "Miles," when you are by yourselves? Is there any effort at fascination which this charming creature has left untried? She told you no doubt what a lonely life she leads in her poor little home?"
Even Mirabel felt that he must not permit this to pa.s.s.
"She has said nothing to me about herself," he answered. "What I know of her, I know from Mr. Wyvil."