Miss de Sor began cautiously with an apology."Excuse me,Mr.
Mirabel,for reminding you of my presence."
Mr.Mirabel made no reply.
"I beg to say,"Francine proceeded,"that I didn't intentionally see you kiss Emily's hand."Mirabel stood,looking at the roses which Emily had left on her chair,as completely absorbed in his own thoughts as if he had been alone in the garden.
"Am I not even worth notice?"Francine asked."Ah,I know to whom I am indebted for your neglect!"She took him familiarly by the arm,and burst into a harsh laugh."Tell me now,in confidence--do you think Emily is fond of you?"The impression left by Emily's kindness was still fresh in Mirabel's memory:he was in no humor to submit to the jealous resentment of a woman whom he regarded with perfect indifference.
Through the varnish of politeness which overlaid his manner,there rose to the surface the underlying insolence,hidden,on all ordinary occasions,from all human eyes.He answered Francine--mercilessly answered her--at last.
"It is the dearest hope of my life that she may be fond of me,"he said.
Francine dropped his arm "And fortune favors your hopes,"she added,with an ironical assumption of interest in Mirabel's prospects."When Mr.Morris leaves us to-morrow,he removes the only obstacle you have to fear.Am I right?""No;you are wrong."
"In what way,if you please?"
"In this way.I don't regard Mr.Morris as an obstacle.Emily is too delicate and too kind to hurt his feelings--she is not in love with him.There is no absorbing interest in her mind to divert her thoughts from me.She is idle and happy;she thoroughly enjoys her visit to this house,and I am associated with her enjoyment.There is my chance--!"He suddenly stopped.Listening to him thus far,unnaturally calm and cold,Francine now showed that she felt the lash of his contempt.A hideous smile passed slowly over her white face.It threatened the vengeance which knows no fear,no pity,no remorse--the vengeance of a jealous woman.Hysterical anger,furious language,Mirabel was prepared for.The smile frightened him.
"Well?"she said scornfully,"why don't you go on?"A bolder man might still have maintained the audacious position which he had assumed.Mirabel's faint heart shrank from it.He was eager to shelter himself under the first excuse that he could find.His ingenuity,paralyzed by his fears,was unable to invent anything new.He feebly availed himself of the commonplace trick of evasion which he had read of in novels,and seen in action on the stage.
"Is it possible,"he asked,with an overacted assumption of surprise,"that you think I am in earnest?"In the case of any other person,Francine would have instantly seen through that flimsy pretense.But the love which accepts the meanest crumbs of comfort that can be thrown to it--which fawns and grovels and deliberately deceives itself,in its own intensely selfish interests--was the love that burned in Francine's breast.The wretched girl believed Mirabel with such an ecstatic sense of belief that she trembled in every limb,and dropped into the nearest chair.
"Iwas in earnest,"she said faintly."Didn't you see it?"He was perfectly shameless;he denied that he had seen it,in the most positive manner."Upon my honor,I thought you were mystifying me,and I humored the joke."She sighed,and looking at him with an expression of tender reproach."I wonder whether I can believe you,"she said softly.
"Indeed you may believe me!"he assured her.
She hesitated--for the pleasure of hesitating."I don't know.