“It’s that which makes me afraid.... He’s out of her world and I’m not so sure that I like it. In Sabine’s world it doesn’t matter who a person is or where he comes from as long as he’s clever and amusing.”
“I’ve watched him.... I’ve talked with him. I think him all that a girl could ask ... a girl like Sybil, I mean.... I shouldn’t recommend him to a silly girl ... he’d give such a wife a very bad time. Besides, I don’t think we can do much about it. Sybil, I think, has decided.”
“Has he asked her to marry him? Has he spoken to you?”
“I don’t know whether he’s asked her. He hasn’t spoken to me. Young men don’t bother about such things nowadays.”
“But Anson won’t like it. There’ll be trouble ... and Cassie, too.”
“Yes ... and still, if Sybil wants him, she’ll have him. I’ve tried to teach her that in a case like this ... well,” she made a little gesture with her white hand, “that she should let nothing make any difference.”
He sat thoughtfully for a long time, and at last, without looking up and almost as if speaking to himself, he said, “There was once an elopement in the family.... Jared and Savina Pentland were married that way.”
“But that wasn’t a happy match ... not too happy,” said Olivia; and immediately she knew that she had come near to betraying herself. A word or two more and he might have trapped her. She saw that it was impossible to add the burden of the letters to these other secrets.
As it was, he looked at her sharply, saying, “No one knows that.... One only knows that she was drowned.”
She saw well enough what he meant to tell her, by that vague hint regarding Savina’s elopement; only now he was back once more in the terrible shell; he was the mysterious, the false, John Pentland who could only hint but never speak directly.