Joan looked at him in growing uneasiness. Her mind, never quick to take in all the bearings and the consequences of her acts, was beginning to work. “What are you going to do with it, Mr. Morena? I don’t want you to do Betty a hurt. She must have loved Prosper Gael. Perhaps she still loves him.”
This odd appeal drew another difficult smile from Betty’s husband. “Quite obviously she still loves him, Jane. She is divorcing me so that she can marry him.”
“But, Mr. Morena, I don’t believe he will marry her now. He is tired of her. He is that kind of lover. He gets tired. Now he would like to marry me. He told me so. Perhaps—if Betty knew that—she might come back to you, without your branding her.”
Jasper was startled out of his vengeful stillness.
“Prosper Gael wants to marry you? He has told you so?”
“Yes.” She was sad and humbled. “Now he wants to marry me and once he told me things about marrying. He said”—Joan quoted slowly, her eyes half-closed in Prosper’s manner, her voice a musical echo of his thin, vibrant tone—“‘It’s man’s most studied insult to woman.’”
“Yes. That’s Prosper,” murmured Jasper.
“I wouldn’t marry him, Mr. Morena, even if I could—not if I were to be—burnt for refusing him.”
Jasper looked probingly at her, a new speculation in his eyes. She had begun to fit definitely into his plans. It seemed there might be a way to frustrate Betty and to keep a hold upon his valuable protégée. “Are you so sure of that, Jane?”
“Ah!” she answered; “you doubt it because I once thought I loved him? But you don’t know all about me....”