Olivia kept seeing the absurd figure of Sabine’s daughter, small and dark, with large burning eyes and an air of sulky independence, striding off on foot through the dust of the lane that led back to Brook Cottage. She was so different from her own daughter, the quiet, well-mannered Sybil.
“I don’t think she’s properly impressed by Durham,” said Olivia, with a sudden mischievous smile.
“No ... she’s bored by it.”
Olivia paused to say good-night to a little procession of guests ... the Pingree girls dressed alike in pink tulle; the plump Miss Perkins, who had the finest collection of samplers in New England; Rodney Phillips, whose life was devoted to breeding springers and behaving like a perfect English gentleman; old Mr. Tilney, whose fortune rested on the mills of Durham and Lynn and Salem; and Bishop Smallwood, a cousin of the Pentlands and Sabine (whom Sabine called the Apostle of the Genteel). The Bishop complimented Olivia on the beauty of her daughter and coquetted heavily with Sabine. Motors rushed out from among the lilacs and syringas and bore them away one by one.
When they had gone Sabine said abruptly, “What sort of man is this Higgins ... I mean your head stableman?”
“A good sort,” replied Olivia. “The children are very fond of him. Why?”
“Oh ... no reason at all. I happened to think of him to-night because I noticed him standing on the terrace just now looking in at the ball.”
“He was a jockey once ... a good one, I believe, until he got too heavy. He’s been with us ten years. He’s good and reliable and sometimes very funny. Old Mr. Pentland depends on him for everything.... Only he has a way of getting into scrapes with the girls from the village. He seems irresistible to them ... and he’s an immoral scamp.”
Sabine’s face lighted up suddenly, as if she had made a great discovery. “I thought so,” she observed, and wandered away abruptly to continue the business of “absorbing” the ball.
She had asked about Higgins because the man was stuck there in her brain, set in the midst of a strange, confused impression that disturbed a mind usually marked by precision and clarity. She did not understand why it was that he remained the most vivid of all the kaleidoscopic procession of the ball. He had been an outsider, a servant, looking in upon it, and yet there he was—a man whom she had never noticed before—vivid and clear-cut, dominating the whole evening.