He could not have known that she was a woman who included among her friends men and women of a dozen nationalities, who lived a life among the clever, successful people of the world ... the architects, the painters, the politicians, the scientists. He could not have known the ruthless rule she put up against tolerating any but people who were “complete.” He could have known nothing of her other life in Paris, and London, and New York, which had nothing to do with the life in Durham and Boston. And yet he did know.... He saw that, despite the great difference in their worlds, there was a certain kinship between them, that they had both come to look upon the world as a pie from which any plum might be drawn if one only knew the knack.
And Sabine, on her side, not yet quite certain about casting aside all barriers, was slowly reaching the same understanding. There was no love or sentimentality in the spark that flashed between them. She was more than ten years older than O’Hara and had done with such things long ago. It was merely a recognition of one strong person by another.
It was O’Hara who first took advantage of the bond. In the midst of the conversation, he had turned the talk rather abruptly to Pentlands.
“I’ve never been there and I know very little of the life,” he said, “but I’ve watched it from a distance and it interests me. It’s like something out of a dream, completely dead ... dead all save for young Mrs. Pentland and Sybil.”
Sabine smiled. “You know Sybil, then?”
“We ride together every morning.... We met one morning by chance along the path by the river and since then we’ve gone nearly every day.”
“She’s a charming girl.... She went to school in France with my daughter, Thérèse. I saw a great deal of her then.”
Far back in her mind the thought occurred to her that there would be something very amusing in the prospect of Sybil married to O’Hara. It would produce such an uproar with Anson and Aunt Cassie and the other relatives.... A Pentland married to an Irish Roman Catholic politician!
“She is like her mother, isn’t she?” asked O’Hara, sitting forward a bit on his chair. He had a way of sitting thus, in the tense, quiet alertness of a cat.
“Very like her mother.... Her mother is a remarkable woman ... a charming woman ... also, I might say, what is the rarest of all things, a really good and generous woman.”