The young man turned scarlet. If Dolly had given him a blow in the face, he could not have felt more astonished. He would have given anything at that moment to be able to remain cool and hide his annoyance, but the stab came too fast and the pain was too sharp for that to be possible.
"Archie would never have made such a remark," he said in a voice which trembled in spite of his efforts at self-control.
"All the more necessary then that some one should make it for him," she retorted. "Had I thought for an instant, perhaps I would not have made it either," she went on; "but I will not try to unsay or take it back."
"You do not seem to set much store upon keeping your friends, Dolly," he remarked with an uneasy smile.
"If speaking the truth parts any friend from me, he is quite welcome to go," she replied; and in this manner Mrs. Mortomley and Rupert separated for the first time in anger.
"She will repent it some day," he thought. But in this he chanced to be mistaken. Whatever else Dolly repented in the days that were then to come, she never regretted having set down Mr. Rupert Halling, when he began to speak slightingly of the man who had acted so generously, if so foolishly towards his brother's children.
CHAPTER XIII.
MORTOMLEY'S FRIENDS.
That was not a pleasant summer at Homewood. True, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and the flowers bloomed, and the fruit ripened, but the Mortomleys could take no enjoyment out of sunshine or perfume or beauty, by reason of an ever-increasing shortness of money and pressure of anxiety.
To Dolly, the time when she had known nothing about business, when she took no interest in the City, or the Works, or the state of trade, seemed like an almost forgotten dream.