CHAPTER X. BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD
Penny, pacing the drawing-room with pantheresque strides, came to a tense halt as Remington entered.
"Well?" he said, his eyes hard, his unwelcoming hands thrust deep into his pockets.
That identical "well" with its uptilt of question had been on George's tongue. It was a monosyllable that demanded an answer. Penny had got ahead of him, forced him, as it were, into the witness chair, and he resented it.
"Seems to me," he began hotly, "that you were the one who was going to make the statements—' whether or no,' I believe, we were to continue in partnership."
"Perhaps," retorted Penny, with the air of allowing no great importance to that angle of the argument, "but what I want to know is, are you going to be a square man, and own up you were peeved into being a tyrant? And when you've done that, are you going to tell Betty, and apologize?"
George hesitated, trapped between his irritation and the still small voice.
"Look here," he said, with that amiable suavity that had won him many a concession, "you know well enough I don't want to hurt Betty's feelings. If she feels that way about it, of course I'll apologize."
His partner looked at him in blank amazement.
"Gad!" he exclaimed as if examining a particularly fine specimen of some rare beetle, "what a bounder."