"He'll discover he's put his foot in it if he tries any game on me," said Mr. Trotter.
M. Mirabeau beamed. "There is always a way to checkmate the villain in the story. You see it exemplified in every melodrama on the stage and in every shilling shocker. The hero,—and you are our hero,—puts him to rout by marrying the heroine and living happily to a hale old age. What could be more beautiful than the marriage of Lady Jane Thorne and Lord Eric Carruthers Ethelbert Temple? Mon dieu! It is—"
"Rubbish!" exclaimed Mr. Trotter, suddenly looking down at his foot, which was employed in the laudable but unnecessary act of removing a tiny shaving from a crack in the floor. "Besides," he went on an instant later, acknowledging an interval of mental consideration, "she wouldn't have me."
"It is my time to say 'rubbish,'" said the old Frenchman. "Why wouldn't she have you?"
"Because she doesn't care for me in that way, if you must know," blurted out the young man.
"Has she said so?"
"Of course not. She wouldn't be likely to volunteer the information, would she?" with fine irony.
"Then how do you know she doesn't care for you in that way?"
"Well, I—I just simply know it, that's all."
"I see. You are the smartest man of all time if you know a woman's heart without probing into it, or her mind without tricking it. She permitted you to carry her up the steps, didn't she?"