"Is it going to be like that every time he comes?"
"Yes."
"Theo—it's perfectly ridiculous the way you put yourself out for that boy!" she protested with unusual heat, kindled by a hidden spark of jealousy. "It's bad enough to have you giving up everything, and making Honor and me thoroughly uncomfortable, without this sort of nonsense on the top of it all."
Honor glanced up in quick remonstrance; but Desmond caught the look in her eyes, and it was enough. "Haven't you the sense to see that just because he is so fond of you he ought to be allowed to know how much trouble he has given you. It's the only way to make him more careful, now he's back again; and if you will go on in this way, I shall end in speaking to him myself."
She had overshot the mark.
Desmond shut the book with a snap; flung it on the table, and sprang up with such anger in his eyes that his wife shrank back instinctively. Her movement, slight as it was, checked the impetuous speech upon his lips.
"You will do nothing of the sort," he said in a restrained voice. "It is a matter entirely between him and me; and that's an end of the subject, once for all."
Evelyn, startled into silence, stood motionless till the study door closed behind her husband; then, with a sigh of exasperation, hurried out of the room, leaving Honor to her own disturbing thoughts.