“Suppose you heard she was engaged to be married?” Francine suggested.
Mirabel’s manner—studiously cold and formal thus far—altered on a sudden. He looked with unconcealed anxiety at Francine. “Do you say that seriously?” he asked.
“I said ‘suppose.’ I don’t exactly know that she is engaged.”
“What do you know?”
“Oh, how interested you are in Emily! She is admired by some people. Are you one of them?”
Mirabel’s experience of women warned him to try silence as a means of provoking her into speaking plainly. The experiment succeeded: Francine returned to the question that he had put to her, and abruptly answered it.
“You may believe me or not, as you like—I know of a man who is in love with her. He has had his opportunities; and he has made good use of them. Would you like to know who he is?”
“I should like to know anything which you may wish to tell me.” He did his best to make the reply in a tone of commonplace politeness—and he might have succeeded in deceiving a man. The woman’s quicker ear told her that he was angry. Francine took the full advantage of that change in her favor.
“I am afraid your good opinion of Emily will be shaken,” she quietly resumed, “when I tell you that she has encouraged a man who is only drawing-master at a school. At the same time, a person in her circumstances—I mean she has no money—ought not to be very hard to please. Of course she has never spoken to you of Mr. Alban Morris?”
“Not that I remember.”