He stared. "You don't mean to say she'd be fool enough—" he began incredulously, but caught himself up in time. "Of course, I'd have to take my chances," he concluded, with more humility than she had ever seen him display. "Do you know of any one else?"
"No," she said seriously. "She doesn't confide in me to that extent, I fear. I've never asked."
"Do you think there was any one back there in England?" He put it in the past tense, so to speak, as if there could be no question about the present.
"Oh, I dare say."
He was regaining his complacency. "That's neither here nor there," he declared. "The thing I want you to do, Sara, is to rush this confounded portrait. I don't like the idea, not a little bit."
"I don't blame you for being afraid of the attractive Mr. Booth," she said, with a significant lifting of her eyebrows.
"I'm going to have it over with before I go up to town, my dear girl," he announced, in a matter-of-fact way. "I've given the whole situation a deuce of a lot of thought, and I've made up my mind to do it. I'm not the sort, you know, to delay matters once my mind's made up. By Jove, Sara, YOU ought to be pleased. I'm not such a rotten catch, if I do say it who shouldn't."
She was perfectly still for a long time, so still that she did not appear to be breathing. Her eyes grew darker, more mysterious. If he had taken the pains to notice, he would have seen that her fingers were rigid.
"I AM pleased," she said, very softly, even gently.
She could have shrieked the words.