An instantaneous change passed over Essex’s face. His eyes seemed suddenly to grow veiled as they narrowed to a cold, non-committal slit. His mouth hardened. Mrs. Willers saw the muscles of his cheeks tighten.
“Really,” he said, “this sudden interest in me is quite flattering. I hardly know what to say.”
He spoke to gain time, for he was amazed and enraged. Mariposa had evidently made a confidante of Mrs. Willers, and he knew that Mrs. Willers was high in favor with Winslow Shackleton and his mother.
“In this country, Mr. Essex,” Mrs. Willers went on, clenching her hands in her lap, for they trembled with her indignation, “men don’t scare and browbeat young women who don’t happen to have the good taste to favor them. When a man gets the mitten he knows enough to get out.”
“Very clever of him, no doubt,” he murmured with unshaken suavity.
“If you’re going to live here you’ve got to live by our laws. You’ve got to do as the Romans do. And take my word for it, young man, the Romans don’t approve of nagging and scaring a woman into marriage.”
“No?” he answered with a blandly questioning inflection, “these are interesting facts in local manners and customs. I’m sure they’d be of value to some one who was making a special study of the subject. Personally I am not deeply interested in the California aborigines. Even the original and charming specimen now before me would oblige me greatly by withdrawing. It is now”—looking at the clock that stood on the side of the desk—“half-past two, and my time is valuable, my dear Mrs. Willers.”
Mrs. Willers rose to her feet, burning with rage.
“Put me off any way you like,” she said, “and be as fresh and smart as you know how. But I tell you, young man, this has got to stop. That girl’s got no one belonging to her here. But don’t imagine from that you can have the field to yourself and go on persecuting her. No—this is not France nor Spain, nor any other old monarchy, where a woman didn’t have any more to say about herself than a mule, or a pet parrot. No, sir. You’ve run up against the wrong proposition if you think you can scare a woman into marrying you in California in the nineteenth century.”
Essex rose from his chair. He was pale.