“Clementina,” said he, “it is you that have been paying Tommy’s expenses.”
“Well, suppose I have?” she replied, defiantly. She added quickly, womanlike divining the reproach to Tommy, underlying Quixtus’s challenge: “He’s a child and I’m an old woman. I had the deuce’s own job to make him accept. I couldn’t go careering about France all by myself—I could, as a matter of practical fact—I could career all over Gehenna if I chose—but it wouldn’t have been gay. He sacrificed his pride to give me a holiday. What have you to say against it?”
A flush of shame mounted to Quixtus’s cheek. It was intolerable that one of his house—his sister’s son—should have been dependent for bread on a woman. He himself was to blame.
“Clementina,” said he, “this is a very delicate matter, and I hope you won’t misjudge me; but as your great generosity was based on a most unhappy misunderstanding——”
“Ephraim Quixtus,” she interrupted, seeing whither he was tending, “go on with your dinner and don’t be a fool!”
There was nothing for it but for Quixtus to go on with his dinner.
“I tell you what,” she said, after a pause, in spite of her weariness of Tommy as a topic of conversation; “when Tommy met you in Paris, he didn’t know what you’ve just told me. He thought you had unreasonably and heartlessly cut him adrift. And yet he greeted you as affectionately and frankly as if nothing had happened.”
“That’s true,” Quixtus admitted. “He did.”
“It proves to you what a sound-hearted fellow Tommy is.”
“I see,” said Quixtus. “Well?”