“You did not?” the relief was so overwhelming, his instant trust in her word so pathetic, that Deb for very shame quickly revoked her lie.
“Not in the way you mean. Why are you so ready to believe ... girls and men in our set—the look of things doesn’t matter so tremendously any more ... doesn’t matter at all—No, do listen to me——” She was honestly fighting down an inclination to sulk—a defiant silence, she would have interpreted the attitude—“I do know what it looks like to you, that I stopped down there with Cliffe that night—but really and truly,” with an appealing little smile—“I’m still Daddy’s good girl?”
“Then why,” asked Ferdie, avoiding her smile—“why did you encourage and then refuse Captain Phillips?”
“Oh——” Deb stared mentally at these two bits of her—yes, her silliness, which entangled produced such a formidable appearance against her. Could she put herself right again? Not without help. She turned with quick confidence to her aunt.
“Auntie Stel——” and stopped as though at a shock.
“I suppose you had just enough decency left not to deceive an honest man!” Stella’s voice sounded as though it had been filed. She crossed from Deb’s side to her brother, the action clearly defining where her support was ranged.
“Ferdie,” she whispered, for he had sunk back to a despondent, shrunken heap in the arm-chair; and his knees shook as she laid her hand on them—“Ferdie, old boy....”
“Little Deb ...” he murmured. Well, Ferdie had always been a sentimentalist. And the girl, hearing, would have flung herself at him, even then, her arms tightly round his neck, to cajole and explain, explain by familiar hugs and kisses ... but Stella was between them. And grandfather, still with that wooden smile jerking up the ends of his moustache. One expected it from grandfather, but Auntie Stel, always so young and jolly—Not quite the words—“juvenile and vivacious” expressed it better, somehow: “Run along and enjoy yourselves, kiddies....” Why was Stella’s look at her now like the sting of a wasp? ... that came of treating a grown-up chummily, and as an equal. Never again. After all, she was only a maiden aunt ... couldn’t tell her so ... even in extremes one couldn’t say the beastliest thing of all—evidently they could, though—no code of honour.... Grown ups!
Deb hunched her shoulders in moody exasperation. Even if she had ... done it, she never dreamt of this rasping encounter with authority. She, who had even honoured her immediate family by bragging about their tolerance and general amiability: “Dad’s an old darling and Auntie Stel a sport, and nobody minds grandfather....”
She said: “Samson Phillips was a prig.”