"Your question is not very civilly put," I said. "However, I excuse you. You are probably not aware that I am a married woman."
"What has that got to do with it?" she retorted. "Married or single, it's all one to the Major. That brazen-faced hussy who calls herself Lady Clarinda is married, and she sends him nosegays three times a week! Not that I care, mind you, about the old fool. But I've lost my situation at the railway, and I've got my own interests to look after, and I don't know what may happen if I let other women come between him and me. That's where the shoe pinches, don't you see? I'm not easy in my mind when I see him leaving you mistress here to do just what you like. No offense! I speak out--I do. I want to know what you are about all by yourself in this room? How did you pick up with the Major? I never heard him speak of you before to-day."
Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange girl there was a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in her favor--to my mind, at any rate. I answered frankly and freely on my side.
"Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husband's," I said, "and he is kind to me for my husband's sake. He has given me permission to look in this room--"
I stopped, at a loss how to describe my employment in terms which should tell her nothing, and which should at the same time successfully set her distrust of me at rest.
"To look about in this room--for what?" she asked. Her eye fell on the library ladder, beside which I was still standing. "For a book?" she resumed.
"Yes," I said, taking the hint. "For a book."
"Haven't you found it yet?"
"No."
She looked hard at me, undisguisedly considering with herself whether I were or were not speaking the truth.
"You seem to be a good sort," she said, making up her mind at last. "There's nothing stuck-up about you. I'll help you if I can. I have rummaged among the books here over and over again, and I know more about them than you do. What book do you want?"
As she put that awkward question she noticed for the first time Lady Clarinda's nosegay lying on the side-table where the Major had left it. Instantly forgetting me and my book, this curious girl pounced like a fury on the flowers, and actually trampled them under her feet!