Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently: “You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back.”
“What?” inquired Mortimer, turning very red.
“I said that you haven't yet told me how you intend to make Howard return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock.”
“I don't exactly know myself,” admitted Mortimer, still overflushed. “I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!”
“I think so too,” she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.
There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.
“I want him to understand that I won't swallow that sort of contemptible treatment,” asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.
“I hope you'll make him understand,” she said, seating herself and resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.
“Oh, I will—never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has practically swindled me, Lydia. Don't you think so?”
She nodded.