Sibyl was very beautiful herself, quite as beautiful as Mary, though very much older. Lucy thought she had not aged a day in appearance since she had first met her, in the home of that acquaintance in the little town at the entrance to Paradise Valley. Sibyl was past-master of that wonderful preservative art which defies wrinkles and gray hairs and the noiseless flight of that foe of all beautiful women, Time. She defied Time, as she defied everything, except the small conventionalities of life, and the changing fashions. She made friends with these, and they served her well.
While talking with Lucy, and nibbling at the cake or sipping the tea, she stopped now and then to caress with coaxing tones her canary, which she had brought into the room and hung in its gilded cage at the window to brighten the place for Mary. She possessed naturally, or had cultivated, that soft, low voice which a Great Poet has declared to be an excellent thing in a woman, and she had assiduously cultivated an outward appearance of much kindness; so that altogether she was very charming, even in the eyes of Lucy Davison, and a most agreeable hostess. Mary was delighted with her.
“Do you know,” said Mary, in a burst of confidence, which a favorable opportunity brought, “she is so good! And she is as kind to the poor as she can be. I know of two old women, and one old man, whom she nearly supports. Of course it isn’t really any sacrifice for her to do it, for she is wealthy. It’s the funniest thing, the way she speaks about it. She says she gives things to poor people just because the giving makes her feel good. ‘Give a quarter to a beggar,’ she says, ‘and you will feel warm inside all day. It is a cheap way to purchase comfort.’”
In that same conversation Mary chanced to mention Curtis Clayton.
“I spoke of him to Mrs. Dudley one day, and I asked her if she knew him.”
“‘Oh, yes, I know him,’ she said; ‘he is a fool, a poor fool!’
“‘He looks so comical,’ I said to her, ‘swinging that stiff arm!’
“Then she looked at me—oh, I can’t tell you how funny her eyes were then, just as if coals were shining behind them, and she said, awfully quiet:
“‘I happen to know how he got that—it was by doing a brave and unselfish deed! He was in love with a beautiful but silly girl, whom I knew.’
“Then she told me the story. He was with this girl on his vacation. He was in Yale then, and she was the daughter of a worthless hotel-keeper. He first met her at the hotel while he was spending a summer in the mountains. She knew that he loved her, and she was vain of it, and she wanted to make him show it. There was a flower growing in a cleft of a cañon, and she asked him to get it for her. He descended. It was dangerous; and she, looking over and pointing out the flower, lost her footing and fell. She was caught by some bushes, but she had a good fall, and landed at a point where she could not get up. The fright that he got by seeing her fall caused him to lose his footing, and he slipped and broke his left arm. To get her up he had to reach down with one hand and hold to an aspen with the other. He could only hold with his right hand, for his left arm was broken; so he dangled his broken left arm over for her to clutch; and she, frightened and selfish, gripped the hand, and after a great effort scrambled up. He held on until she was safe, and then (he had already turned white as death) he fainted. He revived after a time, and they got out of there, forgetting the flower; and though the doctors did what they could, he has had a stiff arm ever since.”