Emma gave him no encouragement, but he did not require any; perfectly satisfied with his own charms, and accustomed to consider himself as superior to his ordinary companions, he was well convinced that her shyness, not her dissatisfaction, kept her silent, and never for a moment supposed she could be otherwise than charmed with his conversation and company.
The dinner appeared to her, consequently, very dull, but at last the moment of release came; her sister-in-law gave the signal for departure, and the four ladies returned to the drawing-room. Here they were no sooner assembled than Margaret commenced a violent attack on Emma for her scandalous flirtation with Mr. Freemantle. He used to be a particular admirer of Margaret's, and she could not with patience resign his admiration to another. In fact she had not strength of mind to see with composure any woman engross the attention of a man with whom she was acquainted, all whose words and looks of admiration she wished to appropriate to herself; for having been for a couple of winters the reigning belle of her small neighbourhood, she still fancied her charms supreme, and was quite insensible of the fact, obvious to every one else, that she was now only exhibiting the remains of former beauty. Her bloom had been of short duration; she was too fretful to preserve the plumpness necessary to show her complexion to advantage, and she early lost the glow and the fairness which had formed her greatest charm.
Alfred Freemantle was not now to be won by all her wiles; Emma's newer face, and the sort of wondering indifference with which she heard his compliments, and his ready-prepared jokes formed an irresistible charm to him; he declared her freshness was _piquant_, her innocence was exquisite, that it was delicious to meet with a pretty girl so perfectly unhacknied in the ways of the world; little suspecting that the simple manner which he took for ignorance of life resulted entirely from her just appreciation of his little talent, and the total want of interest excited by such flattery as he was capable of administering.
But she could make no impression on Margaret by declarations of indifference, or assertions that she had thought him decidedly disagreeable. Her sister considered such words as a mere subterfuge, and would not believe that Mr. Alfred Freemantle was a sort of person to slight one girl for another, a stranger, without some special encouragement to do so.