"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."
"Kate?" said Ianthe.
"She is so—so gone, so absolutely gone."
"Gone?"
"Well, she's really, really in love, deeply, deeply," looking away anywhere but at her sister's eyes.
"With Chris Halton, do you mean?"
"Ho, ho!" he laughed. "Chris who? Lord, no! With me, with me, isn't she?"