“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“Come and sit down by me.” She made room for him on the sofa. Her one favorite aspiration—the longing to excite envy in others—expressed itself in her next words. “Say something pretty,” she answered; “say you would like to have such a room as this.”
“I should like to have your prints,” he remarked. “Will that do?”
“It wouldn’t do—from anybody else. Ah, Mr. Morris, I know why you are not as nice as you might be! You are not happy. The school has lost its one attraction, in losing our dear Emily. You feel it—I know you feel it.” She assisted this expression of sympathy to produce the right effect by a sigh. “What would I not give to inspire such devotion as yours! I don’t envy Emily; I only wish—” She paused in confusion, and opened her fan. “Isn’t it pretty?” she said, with an ostentatious appearance of changing the subject. Alban behaved like a monster; he began to talk of the weather.
“I think this is the hottest day we have had,” he said; “no wonder you want your fan. Netherwoods is an airless place at this season of the year.”
She controlled her temper. “I do indeed feel the heat,” she admitted, with a resignation which gently reproved him; “it is so heavy and oppressive here after Brighton. Perhaps my sad life, far away from home and friends, makes me sensitive to trifles. Do you think so, Mr. Morris?”
The merciless man said he thought it was the situation of the house.
“Miss Ladd took the place in the spring,” he continued; “and only discovered the one objection to it some months afterward. We are in the highest part of the valley here—but, you see, it’s a valley surrounded by hills; and on three sides the hills are near us. All very well in winter; but in summer I have heard of girls in this school so out of health in the relaxing atmosphere that they have been sent home again.”
Francine suddenly showed an interest in what he was saying. If he had cared to observe her closely, he might have noticed it.
“Do you mean that the girls were really ill?” she asked.