"Do you mean Sir Benjamin Collins?"
It was as if Amory had not imagined that Sir Benjamin could by any possibility have been anybody's uncle.
"I called him uncle," said Dorothy, in a voice that she tried to keep steady. "Before I could say the word—I called him——." But she decided not to risk the baby-word she had used—"Unnoo"——
It seemed to Amory a remarkable little coincidence.
"I—I didn't know," she said stupidly.
"No."
"You—you mean you—knew him?——"
"Oh ... oh yes."
Amory said again that she hadn't known....
"Then why," Dorothy would have liked to cry aloud, "have you come, if it isn't to make matters worse by talking about it? That wouldn't have surprised me very much! I should have been quite prepared for you to apologize! It's the kind of thing you would do. I don't think very much of you, you see"... But again that worse than frightened look on her visitor's face struck her sharply, and again a remark of her aunt's returned to her: "They puzzle their brains till their bodies suffer, and overwork their bodies till they're little better than fools." Suddenly she gave her sometime friend more careful attention.