“Ah! please explain; how was I so unfortunate as to displease you on that occasion? To what, especially, do you refer?” Philip gravely inquired, while he ventured to seat himself beside her, although her manner was not particularly inviting.
“Why, to your utter indifference, apparently, to the heroism of Mr. Faxon in saving the life of your sister. Your strange silence when Mr. Temple was making inquiries regarding him, and the fact that you have utterly ignored the young man ever since when you should be eager to show him every possible honor for the unexampled deed of self-sacrifice which he performed. Why, if it had been my sister whom he had saved, I should have been eager to thank him on my knees and crown him for his wonderful courage.”
Philip Wentworth gave vent to a scornful laugh at this.
“Fancy,” he said, with a sneer; “just fancy me going down on my knees to Clifford Faxon, the drudge and window-washer of Beck Hall at Harvard!”
“What!” exclaimed Gertrude, turning to him with a start, “you don’t mean to say that you knew him before you came here!”
Philip instantly regretted having committed himself to such an admission; but he had spoken impulsively and under a sense of irritation.
“I can’t say that I claim him as an acquaintance,” he sarcastically returned, “even though we were in the same class last year.”
“A classmate!” cried Gertrude, with significant emphasis and heightened color.
“Y-e-es,” her companion somewhat reluctantly admitted, “though why such poverty-stricken devils as he will persist in going to college, I can’t imagine.”
“Can’t you, indeed?” retorted Miss Athol, with curling lips and flashing eye. “Really, Mr. Wentworth, do you fondly imagine that all the good things of earth are attainable only by those who happen to have been born with the proverbial spoon in their mouths? And you have known this young man all the time, and have pretended you did not!” she went on indignantly. “You have turned your back upon him, so to speak, refusing to accord him a single manifestation of gratitude for the incalculable debt which you owe him, or even admit to others that he has done a praiseworthy act.”