Her hesitancy pricked him to impatience.
"Well, Evelyn, I am waiting for your answer. Are there other bills besides that one?—Yes or No. I want the truth. Don't stop to embroider it."
At that the blood flew to her cheeks. She sprang up and faced him, tremulous, but defiant.
"If you say things like that to me, I won't tell you anything at all ... ever." And turning sharply away, to hide her tears, she went over to the mantelpiece and leaned upon it, keeping her back towards him.
Desmond followed her.
"I am sorry if I hurt you," he said, a touch of bitterness in his tone. "But the fact that I can speak so without doing you a gross injustice hurts me more than you are ever likely to understand."
"You make it all seem much worse—than it really is," she answered without looking round. "I haven't done anything dreadful, after all. Heaps of people get into debt. You weren't so angry with Mr Denvil; and—and—if you hadn't been in such a hurry to help him, you'd have found it easier to help me now."
"No need to fling that in my teeth, or drag the Boy into the discussion. The cases are not parallel, and you have only yourself to thank that my money went to him instead of you. In my anxiety to avoid anything of this sort, I have questioned you several times, and each time you have told me a lie. The whole pile of bills are nothing to me in comparison with that. I suppose I ought to have known that you could hardly dress as you do on the little I can spare. But I was fool enough to trust you implicitly." He paused, and added with greater gentleness: "What's more, I shall trust you again, unless you make that quite impossible. But I warn you—Ladybird, that if ever you do kill my trust in you, you will kill—everything else along with it."
"Theo!"