Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/173

have talked so much or so intimately of a friend’s private affairs but for a nervous and intense desire to keep to safe topics—Tony’s face had been changing from a polite mask to something uncertain but much more expressive. Now he looked black.

“Did you say her name was Travers?” he enquired. “What was the man’s—the one that wasn’t a gentleman?”

Pamela was, not unnaturally, startled. “It really doesn’t matter, does it?” she said. “Rhodes, or Rose, or Rowe. He was———”

“Ah!” said Tony, and his mouth set like a steel trap.

“What is it? Did you———?”

“Yes, I knew him—and the wreck of him. He was a schoolmaster, wasn’t he? They were engaged, and then she threw him over because he wasn’t fit———”

Pamela’s face was very cold, and she looked older than usual.

“You must admit that it was a preposterous engagement,” she said. “How could she marry a man like that? The Travers are———”

Tony interrupted unceremoniously and deliberately.

“I don’t care if they are Shahs of Persia—they weren’t fit to wait at table on Tom Rhodes before—this happened. And anyhow she had no business to allow it to begin if she was going to feel like that afterwards. He was a gentleman, if ever I saw one, and he was brilliant too. He had had the best sort of education England can give, only instead of having it given to him he had won scholarships. And just because his father was a small farmer, and he was poor and couldn’t get the work he was fitted for at once, but had to teach for awhile in the village school—oh, it makes me sick!”

Pamela’s voice quivered with anger and something else.

“If he was such a wonderful person, it couldn’t hurt him very much to be refused by Millicent, surely!” she said.