"Why not?" He might have put the question angrily, overbearingly; but Maggie was so friendly, suave, confidential, persuasive, and so sure of herself, that with pleasure he copied her accents. He enjoyed thus talking to her intimately in the ugly dark house, with the life-bearing foolish Minnie on the one hand, and the dying old woman on the other. He thought: "There's something splendid about Mag. In fact I always knew there was." And he forgot her terrible social shortcomings, her utter lack of the feminine seductiveness that for him ought to be in every woman, and her invincible stolidity. Her sturdy and yet scarcely articulate championship of Minnie delighted him and quickened his pulse.
"I'd sooner not have her here to-night," said Maggie. "You knew they'd had a tremendous rumpus, didn't you?"
"Who? Auntie and Clara?"
"Yes."
"I didn't. What about? When? Nobody ever said anything to me."
"Oh, it must have been two or three months ago. Auntie said something about Albert not paying me my interest on my money he's got. And then Clara flared up, and the fat was in the fire."
"D'you mean to say he's not paying you your interest? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Oh! It doesn't matter. I didn't want to bother you."
"Well, you ought to have bothered me," said Edwin, with a trace of benevolent severity. He was astounded, and somewhat hurt, that this great family event should have been successfully concealed from him. He felt furious against Albert and Clara, and at the same time proud that his prognostication about the investment with Albert had proved correct.
"Did Hilda know?"