She was acutely touched by his championship of her.
But when one day Cecil boasted to her that he “had given Uncle Ford a piece of his mind” on the same subject, Rose knew well enough that none of the story was true, and her heart sank within her.
“I simply said to him, ‘Look here, Uncle Ford, I think you forget that I’m practically a man now. You can’t speak like that to my mother in front of me, you know——’”
“Shut up, Ces,” she said wearily.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you think I ought to have said it?”
“You never did say it, Ces, and you know that as well as I do.”
“Mother, if you’re not going to believe what I say, you’ll put an absolute end to all confidence between us. I thought I could always depend on you, at least.”
“So you can, as you very well know,” cried Rose indignantly. “But not to swallow stories that I know perfectly well haven’t got a word of truth in them from start to finish. What’s the sense of it, Cecil?”
“What I told you was perfectly true,” he said coldly.
“That you said that to your uncle? When?”