“Something about music lessons, she said. I didn’t like to ask her.”
“Music lessons!” exclaimed Mrs. Willers, with a strong inflection of surprise.
“Yes,” said Barron, uneasy at her tone and the strange look of almost agitated astonishment on her face; “and I’m under the impression he said something to her that frightened her. As I was coming up the steps that afternoon I heard distinctly some one call out in the drawing-room. I burst in on the full jump, for I was certain it was a woman’s voice, and that man came out of the drawing-room as I opened the door. He was smooth as a summer sea; said he hadn’t heard a sound, and went out smirking. Then I went into the drawing-room to see who had been in there and found Miss Moreau, leaning against the wall and white as my cuffs.”
He looked frowningly at Mrs. Willers. She had listened without moving, her face rigidly attentive.
“Mariposa didn’t tell you what they’d been talking about?” she asked.
“No; she told me nothing. And when I asked her about the screams she said I’d been mistaken. But I hadn’t, Mrs. Willers. That man had scared her some way, and she’d screamed. She called for Benito and Mrs. Garcia. I heard her. And she’s looked pale and miserable ever since. What does that blackguard come to see her for, anyway? What’s he after?”
“Her,” said Mrs. Willers, solemnly; “he wants to marry her.”
“Wants to marry her! That foreign spider! Well, he’s got a gall. Humph!—”
Words of sufficient scorn seemed to fail him. That he should be similarly aspiring did not at that moment strike him as reason for moderation in his censure of a rival.
“And is he trying to scare her into marrying him? I wish I’d known that. I’d have broken his neck in the hall.”