Horace had never heard Reuben speak in this tone before. The whole Minster business had perplexed and harassed him into a state of nervous irritability these last few weeks, and it was easy for him now to snap at provocation.
“At least I may be trusted to mind my own affairs,” he said, with cutting niceness of enunciation and a lowering scowl of the brows.
There came a little pause, for Reuben saw himself face to face with a quarrel, and shrank from precipitating it needlessly. Perhaps the rupture would be necessary, but he would do nothing to hasten it out of mere ill-temper.
“That isn’t the point,” he said at last, looking up with more calmness into the other’s face. “I simply commented on your having taken such pains to keep the whole thing from me. Why on earth should you have thought that essential?”
Horace answered with a question. “Who told you about it?” he asked, in a surly tone.
“Old ’Squire Gedney mentioned it first. Others have spoken of it since.”
“Well, what am I to understand? Do you intend to object to my keeping the business? I may tell you that it was by the special request of my clients that I undertook it alone, and, as they laid so much stress on that, it seemed to me best not to speak of it at all to you.”
“Why?”
“To be frank,” said Horace, with a cold gleam in his eye, “I didn’t imagine that it would be particularly pleasant to you to learn that the Minster ladies desired not to have you associated with their affairs. It seemed one of those things best left unsaid. However, you have it now.”
Reuben felt the disagreeable intention of his partner’s words even more than he did their bearing upon the dreams from which he had been awakened. He had by this time perfectly made up his mind about Horace, and realized that a break-up was inevitable. The conviction that this young man was dishonest carried with it, however, the suggestion that it would be wise to probe him and try to learn what he was at.