“Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”
“Would that have influenced you?”
“Why not?” returned Teresa, surprised. She went on very gently—“I hope, if only for Sylvia’s sake, that we shall always be friends.”
“Did you call me?” said Sylvia, looking round.
Teresa put out her hand to her and smiled.
“I call you now, at any rate,” she said. “I was talking about you.”
“And when Walter and I are together, he likes to talk of you,” said the girl happily.
Teresa smiled, thinking only that she was found useful to fill up blank spaces in the conversation. Love might idealise Sylvia, but could hardly go so far as to conjure interest into her talk. Not looking at Wilbraham, she was quite unconscious of his embarrassment, and returned to her subject.
“Mary and you both seem to think Cesare a dangerous man? Now I believe that sort of wild talk is mere froth.”
“I don’t know. It may be,” said Wilbraham, recovering himself with difficulty. “I daresay he is not really dangerous, but somehow I don’t like the fellow. I don’t care for you to have to do with him—”