“You had better go now and telephone to Anson. I fancy he’ll be badly upset, but I shall put an end to that ... and Cassie, too. She had it all planned for the Mannering boy.”
2
Anson was not to be reached all the morning at the office; he had gone, so his secretary said, to a meeting of the Society of Guardians of Young Working Girls without Homes and left express word that he was not to be disturbed. But Aunt Cassie heard the news when she arrived on her morning call at Pentlands. Olivia broke it to her as gently as possible, but as soon as the old lady understood what had happened, she went to pieces badly. Her eyes grew wild; she wept, and her hair became all disheveled. She took the attitude that Sybil had been seduced and was now a woman lost beyond all hope. She kept repeating between punctuations of profound sympathy for Olivia in the hour of her trial, that such a thing had never happened in the Pentland family; until Olivia, enveloped in the old, perilous calm, reminded her of the elopement of Jared Pentland and Savina Dalgedo and bade her abruptly to stop talking nonsense.
And then Aunt Cassie was deeply hurt by her tone, and Peters had to be sent away for smelling-salts at the very moment that Sabine arrived, grinning and triumphant. It was Sabine who helped administer the smelling-salts with the grim air of administering burning coals. When the old lady grew a little more calm she fell again to saying over and over again, “Poor Sybil.... My poor, innocent little Sybil ... that this should have happened to her!”
To which Olivia replied at last, “Jean is a fine young man. I’m sure she couldn’t have done better.” And then, to soften a little Aunt Cassie’s anguish, she said, “And he’s very rich, Aunt Cassie ... a great deal richer than many a husband she might have found here.”
The information had an even better effect than the smelling-salts, so that the old lady became calm enough to take an interest in the details and asked where they had found a motor to go away in.
“It was mine,” said Sabine dryly. “I loaned it to them.”
The result of this statement was all that Sabine could have desired. The old lady sat bolt upright, all bristling, and cried, with an air of suffocation, “Oh, you viper! Why God should have sent me such a trial, I don’t know. You’ve always wished us evil and now I suppose you’re content! May God have mercy on your malicious soul!” And breaking into fresh sobs, she began all over again, “My poor, innocent little Sybil.... What will people say? What will they think has been going on!”
“Don’t be evil-minded, Aunt Cassie,” said Sabine sharply; and then in a calmer voice, “It will be hard on me.... I won’t be able to go to Newport until they come back with the motor.”
“You!... You!...” began Aunt Cassie, and then fell back, a broken woman.