His embracing hand could feel the emotion streaming within the girl.
“Do you like me better than her?”
“Than whom?” he asked.
Ianthe was coy. “You know, you know.”
Masterman’s feelings were a mixture of perturbation and delight, delight at this manifestation of jealousy of her sister which was an agreeable thing, anyway, for it implied a real depth of regard for him; but he was perturbed for he did not know what Kate had told this sister of their last strange meeting. He saluted her again exclaiming: “Never mind her. This is our outing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t like her,” Ianthe added naïvely, “she is so awfully fond of you.”
“O confound her,” he cried, and then, “you mustn’t mind me saying that so, so sharply, you don’t mind, do you?”
Ianthe’s lips were soft and sweet. Sisters were quite unscrupulous, Masterman had heard of such cases before, but he had tenderness and a reluctance to wound anybody’s susceptibility, let alone the feelings of a woman who loved. He was an artist not only in paint, but in sentiment, and it is possible that he excelled in the less tangible medium.
“It’s a little awkward,” he ventured. Ianthe didn’t understand, she didn’t understand that at all.
“The difficulty, you see,” he said with the air of one handling whimsically a question of perplexity that yet yielded its amusement, “is ... is Kate.”