The young man arose to his feet, his face actually pale with consternation.
“I’m sure you’ll believe that I didn’t—that I never imagined such a thing!” he stammered.
“It’s no matter about me—about us,” she returned hotly. “You only care because you said it before us. Of course you wouldn’t have done that if you had known! You have no right to think such things about Dave! And to dare to think that he won’t pay you,—Dave who would work his fingers to the bone, who would starve, rather than leave a debt unpaid!”
“But I didn’t know anything about him. If somebody had only given me a hint!” groaned the young man. “I knew that Miss Yorke lived in the same place that his letters came from, but I didn’t think anything about it.”
He looked really distressed and he halted and stammered in his speech like a school-boy.
Peggy Carruthers was very red in the face and I fancied that she was inwardly torn by the conflict between her duties as a hostess and her resentment of Estelle’s plain-speaking. I was sure that she was wishing that Alice Yorke had not brought her rude and countryfied friends to her studio.
“I—I wish you wouldn’t think anything about the money,” he stammered on. “Of course it doesn’t signify at all! I would have bitten my tongue out before I would have said it if I had known! I don’t think it was quite the thing; quite kind of you I mean, to let me go on talking when—when he is your brother!”
“All you think of is that you have spoken out before us!” cried Estelle tempestuously again. “You don’t care at all that you have ill-treated and misjudged him!”
It was the old story. Estelle was fiercely resentful against any one who did not believe in Dave. While, under the circumstances, it was surely scarcely reasonable to expect that the young man should do so.
“My dears, my dears, I trust that nothing unpleasant is happening!” interrupted Miss Bocock, whose serenity rivaled that of the Minerva on the pedestal beside her. She looked from one disturbed face to another with a little deprecating smile.