However, she did not contradict him, nor reveal any of the petulance at being overruled, which most people would have expressed.
Instead, she looked at her companion with the clear, level glance he was beginning to know fairly well.
“That is a pretty hard thing to say about a human being, Mr. Brent. Sometimes I think it is perhaps the cruelest thing anybody can ever say about another,” she repeated slowly. “You see it really means everything. A man or a woman who is a cad is capable of almost any dishonor. And, worst of all, a cad does not even know when he is dishonorable.”
“Yes,” Howard Brent repeated. “I expect that is a pretty good definition of a cad. You may not think Marshall so bad as all that, but unfortunately I do.” He stopped a moment, his skin tanned from the Arizona winds and suns reddening faintly.
No matter how valiantly he had approached the moment of his confidence to Peggy Webster, the actual telling was to be no more agreeable then he had conceived it.
At this instant he hesitated.
“I think you owe it to Ralph to tell me why you think he is a cad,” she declared.
Peggy’s hands were clasped quietly in her lap and she was leaning forward, looking with earnestness at her companion. But she did not appear disturbed. She was sorry that he had so unfortunate a point of view about Ralph, but she did not feel in the least danger of being convinced by his opinion. For Peggy’s points of view were her own.
“Oh, it is pretty hard to tell,” Howard went on, “and you may not think I ought to tell you. Somehow it does seem impertinent of me to dare speak of it. But I just can’t stand your being influenced by Ralph Marshall’s attentions to you. The truth is about ten days or two weeks ago I overheard him making a bet with Terry Benton. He insisted that he could influence you to care for him as easily and in the same way that other girls do by paying you attention. He bet Benton a hundred dollars.”
Howard Brent’s face stiffened. The thing sounded even uglier in the telling than when it had occurred, and he had not intended that it should.