She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
“Of course,” said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
“Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that afternoon,” Sibyl went on. “They're really delightful people. Indeed they are! Yes—”
She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite errand. Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of abstraction as she looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the errand was a serious one for the caller and easily to be connected with the slight but perceptible agitation underlying her assumption of cheerful ease. There was a restlessness of breathing, a restlessness of hands.
“Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some of the people here in town the other day,” said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and protracting it. “They said something that took ME by surprise! We were talking about our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn—”
Mary interrupted her promptly. “Do you mean 'mutual' to include my mother and me?” she asked.
“Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean.”
“No,” said Mary. “We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of ours.”
To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. “That's just the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!” she cried, with a vehemence that made Mary stare. “Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families here speak of him!”
Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure. “I had the impression he was a friend of yours,” she said; adding, hastily, “and your husband's.”