"Never!" said Mordaunt.
"Poor old Aunt Phil!" Noel chuckled afresh. "She would have been in her element if you had only given her the chance. She hates us all like poison. I suppose you know why?"
"Haven't an idea," Mordaunt spoke repressively, "unless your general behaviour has something to do with it."
"Oh, very likely it has," Noel conceded. "But the chief reason was that our father diddled her out of a lot of money. He was hard up, and she was rolling. So he—borrowed a little." He glanced at Mordaunt with a queer grimace. "Most unfortunately he didn't live to pay it back. I shouldn't tell anyone this, but I don't mind telling you, as you are one of the family."
"And who told you?" Mordaunt inquired.
"Me? I overheard it."
"How?"
The question came sternly, but Noel was sublimely unabashed.
"The usual way. How does one generally overhear things? I hid behind a shutter once when Aunt Phil and Murdoch, our man of business, were having a talk. She pitched it pretty strong, I can tell you. I should have felt quite sorry for the old girl if I hadn't known that her husband had left her more than she could possibly know what to do with. As it was, I was rather glad than otherwise, for she's disgustingly mean over trifles. And people who can shell out and won't should be made to."
Mordaunt received this axiom in silence. As a matter of fact he was somewhat staggered by the information thus airily imparted. But he did not question the truth of it. He only wondered that he had never considered such a possibility before.