'Be quick, then,' commanded Peggy, sitting down, but obviously under protest. 'And you have done something too,' she went on. 'You've connived at it. You've backed him up. You've helped to deceive us all. You've listened to me while I praised him. You've praised him yourself.'
'I told you he could afford to give the dinner.'
'Yes—as he told me to-day that he wasn't a pauper! He made me think I'd hurt his feelings. I felt wretched. I begged him to forgive me. Oh, but it's not that! Tommy, it's the wretched meanness of it all! He was just one of the six or seven people in the world; and now——!'
Tommy was smoking, and had fallen into meditative silence.
He did not lack understanding of her feelings—anything she felt was always vivid to him—and on his own account he was no stranger to the thoughts that Airey Newton's propensity bred.
'How much money has he got?' she asked abruptly.
'I mustn't tell you.'
'More than what you said to that man?'
'Yes, more.'