“We all knew that,” said Luke, in a dangerous voice, which trite observation she chose to ignore.
“You have had equal advantages,” pursued the dispenser of charity. “I have shown no favour; I have treated you alike. It had been my intention to do so all your lives and after my death.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker was so interested at this juncture that she leant forward with parted lips, listening eagerly. The Honourable Mrs. Harrington allowed herself the plebeian pleasure of returning the stare with a questioning glance which broke off into a little laugh.
“Have you,” she continued, addressing Luke directly, “any reason to offer for your failure--beyond the usual one of bad luck?”
Luke looked at her in a lowering way and made no reply. Had Mrs. Harrington been a poor woman, she would have recognised that the boy was at the end of his tether. But she had always been surrounded - as such women are--by men, and more especially by women, who would swallow any insult, any insolence, so long as it was gilded. The world had, in fact, accepted the Honourable Mrs. Harrington because she could afford to gild herself.
“It was bad luck, and nothing else,” burst out Fitz, heedless of her sarcastic tones. “Luke is a better sailor than I am. But he always was weak in his astronomy, and it all turned on astronomy.”
“I should imagine it all turned on stupidity,” said Mrs. Harrington.
“I’m stupid, if you like,” said Fitz; “Luke isn’t. Luke is clever; ask any chap on board!”
“I do not need to ask any chap on board,” said Mrs. Harrington. “My own common sense tells me that he is clever. He has proved it.”
“It’s like a woman--to hit a fellow when he’s down,” said Luke, with his hands deep in his pockets.