“No, they’re not engaged. She’s refused him.”
“Refused him? That girl who’s been living in an adobe at Santa Barbara, refuse that fine-looking fellow? Why, she’ll never see a man like that again in her life. She’s not refused him? Of course, she’s engaged to him.”
“No, you’re mistaken. She’s not. She doesn’t like him.”
“That’s what she tells you. Girls always say that sort of thing. That explains the way she’s acted from the start. He hadn’t asked her when Mr. Shackleton was alive. She’s engaged to him now and doesn’t want to leave him. She struck me as just that soft, sentimental sort.”
“You’re wrong, Mrs. Shackleton; I know Mariposa Moreau. She tells the truth; all of it. That’s why it’s so hard sometimes to understand what she means. We’re not used to it. She doesn’t like that man, and she wouldn’t marry him if he was hung all over with diamonds and was going to give her the Con Virginia for a wedding present.”
“Bosh!” ejaculated her companion, with sudden, sharp irritation. “That’s what she says. They have no money to marry on, I suppose, and she’s trying to keep her engagement secret. It explains everything. I must say I’m relieved. I had the girl on my mind, and it seemed to me she was so senseless and fly-away that you didn’t know where she’d fetch up.”
Mrs. Willers was annoyed. It was not pleasant to her to hear Mariposa spoken of this way. But a long life of struggle and misfortune had taught her, among other valuable things, the art of hiding unprofitable anger under a bland smile.
“Well, all I can say,” she said, laughing quite naturally, “is that I hope you’re wrong. I’m sure I don’t want to see her married to that man.”
“Why not?” queried Mrs. Shackleton, with the sudden arrested glance of surprised curiosity. “What is there to object to in such a marriage?”
“Hundreds of things,” answered Mrs. Willers, feeling that there are many disadvantages in having to converse with your employer’s mother on the subject of one of your best friends. “Who knows anything about Barry Essex? No one knows where he comes from, or who he is, or even if Essex is his name. I don’t believe it is, at all. I think he just took it because it sounds like the aristocracy. And what’s his record? I’ll lay ten to one there are things behind him he wouldn’t like to see published on the front page of The Trumpet. He’s no man to make a girl happy.”