“Meaning that I’m not sure whether I’ll tell you or not.”
“Maybe it would be better if I didn’t know. That’s what you’re thinking?”
“Yes, that was what I was thinking.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Molloy. Then he laughed again. “I’ve the joke on Ember anyhow,” he said. “He thinks he’s got a patent for most of the brains in the country, and here he’s been led by the nose by a slip of a girl just out of school. And what’s more, he was taken in and I wasn’t. He’ll find that hard to swallow, will Mr. Jeffrey Ember. You’d not have taken me in, you know, even if I’d not had the mole to go by. And one of these fine days I shall twit Ember with that.”
“Are you so sure you’d have known me?” said Jane. “Why?”
“My dear girl,” said Mr. Molloy, “if you knew your cousin Renata, you’d not be asking me that. If I find a girl in an underground passage all in the dark, well, that girl is not my daughter Renata. And if, by any queer sort of chance, Renata had been in that hole where I found you, she’d have screamed blue murder when I turned the light on her. Then, at an easy guess, I should say you had Renata beat to a frazzle in the matter of brains. I’m not saying, mind you, that I’m an admirer of brains in a woman. It’s all a matter of opinion, and there’s all sorts in the world. But you’ve got brains, and Renata hasn’t, and Ember’s had you under his nose all this time without ever knowing the difference.”
Jane laughed.
“Perhaps I didn’t exactly obtrude my superior intelligence on Mr. Ember,” she said. Her eyes danced. “You’ve no idea how stupid I can be when I try, and I’ve been trying very hard indeed.”
“The devil you have?” said Mr. Molloy. “Well, you had Ember deceived and that’s a grand feather in your cap, I can tell you. He’s a hard one to deceive is Ember.”
Jane gurgled suddenly.