Sabine went on coldly, pushing her assault to the very end. “I divorced him at last, not because he was unfaithful to me, but because there was another woman who wanted to marry him ... a woman whom I respect and like ... a woman who is still my friend. Understand that I loved him passionately ... in a very fleshly way. One couldn’t help it. I wasn’t the only woman.... He was a kind of devil, but a very fascinating one.”
The old woman was a little stunned but not by any means defeated. Sabine saw a look come into her eyes, a look which clearly said, “So this is what the world has done to my poor, dear, innocent little Sabine!” At last she said with a sigh, “I find it an amazing world. I don’t know what it is coming to.”
“Nor I,” replied Sabine with an air of complete agreement and sympathy. She understood that the struggle was not yet finished, for Aunt Cassie had a way of putting herself always in an impregnable position, of wrapping herself in layer after layer of sighs and sympathy, of charity and forgiveness, of meekness and tears, so that in the end there was no way of suddenly tearing them aside and saying, “There you are ... naked at last, a horrible meddling old woman!” And Sabine kept thinking, too, that if Aunt Cassie had lived in the days of her witch-baiting ancestor, Preserved Pentland, she would have been burned for a witch.
And all the while Sabine had been suffering, quietly, deep inside, behind the frankly painted face ... suffering in a way which no one in the world had ever suspected; for it was like tearing out her heart, to talk thus of Richard Callendar, even to speak his name.
Aloud she said, “And how is Mrs. Pentland.... I mean Olivia ... not my cousin.... I know how she is ... no better.”
“No better.... It is one of those things which I can never understand.... Why God should have sent such a calamity to a good man like my brother.”
“But Olivia ...” began Sabine, putting an end abruptly to what was clearly the prelude to a pious monologue.
“Oh!... Olivia,” replied Aunt Cassie, launching into an account of the young Mrs. Pentland. “Olivia is an angel ... an angel, a blessing of God sent to my poor brother. But she’s not been well lately. She’s been rather sharp with me ... even with poor Miss Peavey, who is so sensitive. I can’t imagine what has come over her.”
It seemed that the strong, handsome Olivia was suffering from nerves. She was, Aunt Cassie said, unhappy about something, although she could not see why Olivia shouldn’t be happy ... a woman with everything in the world.
“Everything?” echoed Sabine. “Has any one in the world got everything?”