Marcella gave an angry start. Louis protested.
"Nonsense!" said Anthony doggedly; "you'll have to bear it from me, I tell you—unless you muzzle me too with an Anna."
"But I don't see why I should bear it," said Marcella, turning upon him. "I think you know that I owe Mr. Wharton a debt. Please remember it!"
Anthony looked at her an instant in silence. A question crossed his mind concerning her. Then he made her a little clumsy bow.
"I am dumb," he said. "My manners, you perceive, are what they always were."
"What do you mean by such a remark," cried Marcella, fuming. "How can a man who has reached the position he has in so short a time—in so many different worlds—be disposed of by calling him an ugly name? It is more than unjust—it is absurd! Besides, what can you know of him?"
"You forget," said Anthony, as he calmly helped himself to more bread and butter, "that it is some three years since Master Harry Wharton joined the Venturists and began to be heard of at all. I watched his beginnings, and if I didn't know him well, my friends and Louis's did. And most of them—as he knows!—have pretty strong opinions by now about the man."
"Come, come, Anthony!" said Louis, "nobody expects a man of that type to be the pure-eyed patriot. But neither you nor I can deny that he has done some good service. Am I asked to take him to my bosom? Not at all! He proposes a job to me, and offers to pay me. I like the job, and mean to use him and his paper, both to earn some money that I want, and do a bit of decent work."
"You—use Harry Wharton!" said the cripple, with a sarcasm that brought the colour to Louis's thin cheek and made Marcella angrier than before. She saw nothing in his attack on Wharton, except personal prejudice and ill-will. It was natural enough, that a man of Anthony Craven's type—poor, unsuccessful, and embittered—should dislike a popular victorious personality.
"Suppose we leave Mr. Wharton alone?" she said with emphasis, and Anthony, making her a little proud gesture of submission, threw himself back in his chair, and was silent.