“Yes,” she said, but too simply. “Jean Ferret.”
“Anglicise that ruffian’s name,” I muttered, mirth immediately withering upon me, “and you’ll know him better. To save time: will you mention anything you can think of that he HASN’T told you?”
Miss Elliott cocked her head upon one side to examine the work of art she was producing, while a slight smile, playing about her lips, seemed to indicate that she was appeased. “You and Miss Ward are old and dear friends, aren’t you?” she asked absently.
“We are!” I answered between my teeth. “For years I have sent her costly jewels—”
She interrupted me by breaking outright into a peal of laughter, which rang with such childish delight that I retorted by offering several malevolent observations upon the babbling of French servants and the order of mind attributable to those who listened to them. Her defence was to affect inattention and paint busily until some time after I had concluded.
“I think she’s going to take Cressie Ingle,” she said dreamily, with the air of one whose thoughts have been far, far away. “It looks preponderously like it. She’s been teetertottering these AGES and AGES between you—”
“Between whom?”
“You and Mr. Ingle,” she replied, not altering her tone in the slightest. “But she’s all for her brother, of course, and though you’re his friend, Ingle is a personage in the world they court, and among the MULTITUDINOUS things his father left him is an art magazine, or one that’s long on art or something of that sort—I don’t know just what—so altogether it will be a good thing for DEAREST Mr. Ward. She likes Cressie, of course, though I think she likes you better—”
I managed to find my voice and interrupt the thistle-brained creature. “What put these fantasias into your head?”
“Not Jean Ferret,” she responded promptly.