“You must think it queer, my coming down on you this way, when you’re up to your neck in work, but I won’t keep you ten minutes.” She looked at the small nickel clock that ticked aggressively in the middle of the desk. “And I know you are too busy a woman to ask you to come all the way up to my house. So I’ve come down to you.”
“Pleased and flattered,” murmured Mrs. Willers, pushing back her chair, and kicking a space in the newspapers, so that she could cross her knees at ease. “But, don’t hurry, Mrs. Shackleton. Work’s well on and I’m at your disposal for a good many ten minutes.”
“It’s just to talk over that letter you sent me by Win. What do you understand by Miss Moreau’s behavior, Mrs. Willers?”
“I don’t understand anything by it. I don’t understand it at all.”
“That’s the way it seems to me. There’s only one explanation of it that I can see, and you say that isn’t the right one.”
“What was that?”
“That there’s some man here she’s interested in. When a girl of that age, without a cent, or a friend or a prospect, refuses an offer that means a successful and maybe a famous future, what’s a person to think? Something’s stopping her. And the only thing I know of that would stop her is that she’s fallen in love. But you say she hasn’t.”
“She don’t strike me as being so. She don’t talk like a girl in love.”
“Is there any man who is interested in her and sees her continually?”
Mrs. Willers was naturally a truthful woman, but a hard experience of life had taught her to prevaricate with skill and coolness when she thought the occasion demanded it. She saw no menace now, however, and was entirely in sympathy with Mrs. Shackleton in her annoyance at Mariposa’s irritating behavior.