“Oh,” she said, in a subdued voice, “then it’s he that’s in love?”
The girl made no answer. She felt hot and sore, pricked by this insistent probing of spots that were still raw.
“Does he—does he—bother you?” the elder woman said in an incredulous voice. Somehow she could not reconcile the picture of Essex as a repulsed and suppliant wooer with her knowledge of him as such a very self-assured and debonair person.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘bother me,’” said Mariposa, still heated. “He makes love to me, and I don’t like it. I don’t like him.”
“Makes love to you? What do you mean by ‘makes love to you?’”
“He has asked me to be his wife,” said the victim, goaded to desperation by this tormenting catechism.
She could not have confessed that Essex had entertained other designs with regard to her, any more than she could have told her real reason for refusing Mrs. Shackleton’s offer. But she felt ashamed and miserable at these half-truths, which her friend was giving ear to with the wide eyes of wonder.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Willers, “I never thought that man would want to marry a poor girl. But that’s not as surprising as that you had sense enough to refuse him.”
“I don’t like him. I know I’m stupid, but I know when I like a person and when I don’t. And I’d rather stand on the corner of Kearney and Sutter Streets with a tin cup begging for nickels than marry Mr. Essex, or be sent to Europe by Mrs. Shackleton.”
“Well, you’re a combination of smartness and folly I never expect to see beaten. You’ve got sense enough to refuse to marry a man who’s bound to make you miserable. That’s astonishing in any girl. And then, on the other hand, you throw up the chance of a lifetime for nothing. That would be astonishing in a candidate for entrance into an asylum for the feeble-minded.”