“Oh, Mrs. Rowland,” cried the girl, “I hope you will forgive him! He is such a little wretch for that. It must have been one of his silly practical jokes to bring that man here.”
“It is not the sort of practical joke which will get him friends,” said Evelyn seriously; the man was gone, and the embargo was removed. “He ought not to have brought him here. And did you know him, Rosamond?”
“I know him! but I know this, that Eddy told me not to dance with him; and I will say this much for Eddy,” said Rosamond, with a hot blush, “that he warned Marion too.”
“But both of you——”
“Yes, it is true. I did—that nobody might say I left my brother in the lurch—offered to dance when I saw him standing there, Eddy taking no notice. Even a—beast—like that, if you get him asked, you ought to be civil to him.” Rosamond’s cheeks were flushed, and she held her head very high. “But Marion did it out of contradiction, because he had told her not——”
“There is not much to commend in the whole matter,” said Evelyn, with a sigh. “But I think, on the whole, you were the least wrong. And has he dealings with people like these? Would that man have been likely to get your brother—under his power?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Rowland,” said Rosamond, with a glow on her cheeks.
“And yet it is plain enough, my dear. Is it possible that—about money or betting or anything of the kind, Eddy might have got under that man’s influence—in his power?”
Rosamond held her head higher than words could describe. “If you mean that he took money to introduce him into society——”
“I did not mean that,” said Evelyn in a parenthesis, but Rosamond did not pause to hear.