I couldn't lay my hands on it just now to save my life." His excuses convinced him while he uttered them, but he had barely paused before Gabriella demolished them with a single blow of her merciless logic.
"You were talking last night about buying a horse," she replied.
He frowned resentfully, and she immediately regretted her words.

By speaking the truth she had defeated her purpose.
"It isn't as if I were buying a horse for pleasure," he answered doggedly; "I am dependent on exercise--you can see for yourself how I've gone off in the last two or three months.

Of course if the horse were simply for enjoyment, like a carriage, it would be different.

But mother has given up her carriage," he concluded triumphantly.
He was a spendthrift, she realized, but he was a spendthrift with a streak of stinginess in his nature.

Though he enjoyed gratifying his own desires, which were many, it pained him inexpressibly to witness extravagance on the part of others, and by a curious twist of the imagination, all money spent by Gabriella appeared to him to be an extravagance.