Piers grinned sarcastically. "Look at him, and you'll understand. He's such an intriguing young devil. I am always longing to give him something."
Renny spoke, from where he sat on the window-seat. "Cut that out, Piers."
Nicholas continued: "Were you often alone with my mother? I don't remember ever finding you together!"
Finch writhed; his chin sank to his breast. He set his teeth.
Renny said: "Make a clean breast of it, Finch! Hold your head up."
He was intolerably miserable. He could not bear it. Yet he must bear it. They would give him no peace till they had everything out of him.
"Buck up!" said Renny. "You didn't steal the goddess, or the money either. Don't act as though you had!"
Finch raised his head. He fixed his eyes on Augusta's crochet work, which lay on her lap, and said in a husky voice:
"I've been going to the church to practise on the organ at night. Once, when I came in very late, Gran called me. I went into her room and we talked together. That was the night she gave me the goddess. After that I went often—almost every night." He stopped with a jerk.
There was a sultry silence while they waited for him to go on.
Nicholas nudged him, almost gently. "Yes? You went every night to my mother's room. You talked. Would you mind telling me what about?"
"I talked about music, but not much. She did most of the talking. The old days here—her life in India, and about when she was a young girl in the Old Country."
Ernest cried: "No wonder she was drowsy in the daytime! Awake half the night talking!"
Finch was reckless now. They might as well have something to rage about. "I used," he said, "to go to the dining-room and get biscuits and glasses of sherry, and that made her enjoy it more. It helped keep her awake."
