Part 5 (2/2)
”Daphne! I really believe you're in love with him!”
”Not at all,” said Daphne, her eyelids flickering; ”I never know what to talk to him about.”
”As if that mattered!”
”Elsie Maddison always knows what to talk to him about, and he chatters to her the whole time.”
Mrs. Verrier paused a moment, then said: ”Do you suppose he came to America to marry money?”
”I haven't an idea.”
”Do you suppose he knows that you--are not exactly a pauper?”
Daphne drew herself away impatiently. ”I really don't suppose anything, Madeleine. He never talks about money, and I should think he had plenty himself.”
Mrs. Verrier replied by giving an outline of the financial misfortunes of Mr. Barnes _pere_, as they had been described to her by another English traveller in Was.h.i.+ngton.
Daphne listened indifferently. ”He can't be very poor or he wouldn't behave as he does. And he is to inherit the General's property. He told me so.”
”And it wouldn't matter to you, Daphne, if you did think a man had married you for money?”
Daphne had risen, and was pacing the drawing-room floor, her hands clasped behind her back. She turned a cloudy face upon her questioner.
”It would matter a great deal, if I thought it had been only for money.
But then, I hope I shouldn't have been such a fool as to marry him.”
”But you could bear it, if the money counted for something?”
”I'm not an idiot!” said the girl, with energy. ”With whom doesn't money count for something? Of course a man must take money into consideration.” There was a curious touch of arrogance in the gesture which accompanied the words.
”'How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!--How pleasant it is to have money,'” said Mrs. Verrier, quoting, with a laugh. ”Yes, I dare say, you'd be very reasonable, Daphne, about that kind of thing. But I don't think you'd be a comfortable wife, dear, all the same.”
”What do you mean?”
”You might allow your husband to spare a little love to your money; you would be for killing him if he ever looked at another woman!”
”You mean I should be jealous?” asked Daphne, almost with violence. ”You are quite right there. I should be very jealous. On that point I should 'find quarrel in a straw.'”
Her cheeks had flushed a pa.s.sionate red. The eyes which she had inherited from her Spanish grandmother blazed above them. She had become suddenly a woman of Andalusia and the South, moved by certain primitive forces in the blood.
Madeleine Verrier held out her hands, smiling.
”Come here, little wild cat. I believe you are jealous of Elsie Maddison.”
Daphne approached her slowly, and slowly dropped into a seat beside her friend, her eyes still fixed and splendid. But as she looked into them Madeleine Verrier saw them suddenly dimmed.
”Daphne! you _are_ in love with him!”
The girl recovered herself, clenching her small hands. ”If I am,” she said resolutely, ”it is strange how like the other thing it is! I don't know whether I shall speak to him to-night.”
”To-night?” Mrs. Verrier looked a little puzzled.
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