"You made an offer in my name?" he demanded.
"Sit down," she commanded, waving her hand toward his chair. "There is a good deal to be said, and you'll be tired of standing before I tell it all. Is there any danger that Mr. Fairfield may come in?"
Jack walked over to the door and slipped the catch.
"He is not likely to come," he said, "but it's sure now. Fire away."
He spoke with a seriousness which he used seldom. There were times when lazy, good-tempered Jack Neligage took a stubborn fit, and those who knew him well did not often venture to cross him in those moods. The proverb about the wrath of a patient man had sometimes been applied to him. When these rare occasions came on which his temper gave way he became unusually calm and self-possessed, as he was now. It could not but have been evident to his mother that she had to do with her son in one of the worst of his rare rages. Perhaps the vexations of the previous days, the pile of torn bills on the table, the icy greeting Alice Endicott had given him yesterday, all had to do with the sudden outbreak of his anger, but any man might have been excused for being displeased by such an announcement as had just been made to Jack.
"I'm not going into your financial affairs, Jack," Mrs. Neligage remarked, with entire self-possession, "only that they count, of course."
"I know enough about them," he said curtly. "We'll take them for granted."
"Very well then—we will talk about mine. You've hinted once or twice that you didn't like the way I flirted with Sibley Langdon. I owe him six thousand dollars."
If the widow had been planning a theatrical effect in her coolly pronounced words, she had no reason to be disappointed at the result. Jack started to his feet with an oath, and glared at her with angry eyes.
"More than that," she went on boldly, though she cast down her glance before his, "the money was to save me from the consequences of—"