Phil, not realizing the sensitiveness of the subject, laughed.
"Good work, Eliza! We'll have one aristocratic tea in the Sidney studio, before we fall to stone china and mugs."
"The others ain't stone china and mugs," cried Eliza. She was trembling from head to foot, as frightened and enraged by Edgar's suggestion as if her own life had been at stake. "They're all good, comfortable things. If it was safe I'd leave all these for you, Mr. Philip, just as liefs to as not, for she loved you; but you are gone all day; they'd be stole—just as Mr. Fabian says."
Edgar blinked, then his face grew scarlet as the servant's implication grew upon him.
"What do you mean—you—!"
He leaped to his feet and faced Eliza, who glared back at him. "These things should belong to my mother," he said, "and it's a good thing you didn't succeed in getting away with them. She may set some value on the old stuff. I don't know."
"Edgar!" exclaimed Kathleen, as scarlet as he, while the duel had all happened so suddenly that the host stared, dazed.
He had just lifted another silver piece from the barrel and taken it from its flannel bag.
"They do not belong to your mother," returned Eliza angrily. "They belong to me, to have and to hold, or to give away as I see fit."
Edgar shrugged. "Oh, in that case—" he returned. He didn't like Eliza's eyes.