‘Folly!’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you know I have the good luck to be a minor?’
‘That is no excuse for dishonesty.’
‘Look at home before you call names,’ said Owen, growing enraged. ‘Before you act spy on me, I should like to know who paid for your fine salmon-fly gown, and all the rest of it?’
‘I never contracted debts in the trust that my age would enable me to defraud my creditors.’
‘Who told you that I did? I tell you, Lucilla, I’ll endure no such conduct from you. No sister has a right to say such things!’ and starting up, his furious stamp shook the floor she sat upon, so close to her that it was as if the next would demolish her.
She did not move, except to look up all the length of the tall figure over her into the passion-flushed face. ‘I should neither have said nor thought so, Owen,’ she replied. ‘I should have imputed these debts to mere heedless extravagance, like other people’s—like my own, if you please—save for your own words, and for finding you capable of such treachery as borrowing on a post-obit.’
He walked about furiously, stammering interrogations on the mode of her discovery, and, as she explained, storming at her for having brought this down on him by the folly of putting ‘that thing into the Times.’ Why could she not have stayed away, instead of meddling where she was not wanted?
‘I thought myself wanted when my brother was in trouble,’
said Lucilla, mournfully, raising her face, which she had bent between her hands at the first swoop of the tempest. ‘Heaven knows, I had no thought of spying. I came to stand by your wife, and comfort you. I only learnt all this in trying to shield you from intrusion. Oh, would that I knew it not! Would that I could think of you as I did an hour ago! Oh, Owen, though I have never shared your fondness for Honor Charlecote, I thought it genuine; I did not scorn it as fortune-hunting.’
‘It was not! It never was!’ cried the poor boy. ‘Honor! Poor Honor! Lucy, I doubt if I could have felt for my mother as I do for her. Oh, if you could guess how I long for her dear voice in my ears, her soft hand on my head—’ and he sank into his chair, hiding his face and sobbing aloud.