But there was one claim, she knew; there was Sybil. She must not make a fool of herself for the sake of Sybil. She must do nothing to interfere with what had been taking place this very morning in the small fishing-boat far out beyond the marshes somewhere near the spot where Savina Pentland had been drowned. She knew well enough why Sybil had chosen to go fishing instead of riding; it was so easy to look at the girl and at young de Cyon and know what was happening there. She herself had no right to stand in the way of this other thing which was so much younger and fresher, so much more nearly perfect.
As she put her mare over the low wall by the stables she looked up and chanced to see a familiar figure in rusty black standing in the garden, as if she had been there all the while looking out over the meadows, watching them. As she drew near, Aunt Cassie came forward with an expression of anxiety on her face, saying in a thin, hushed voice, as if she might be overheard, “I thought you’d never come back, Olivia dear. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Aware from the intense air of mystery that some new calamity had occurred, Olivia replied, “I was riding with O’Hara. We went too far and it was too hot to hurry the horses.”
“I know,” said Aunt Cassie. “I saw you.” (“Of course she would,” thought Olivia. “Does anything ever escape her?”) “It’s about her. She’s been violent again this morning and Miss Egan says you may be able to do something. She keeps raving about something to do with the attic and Sabine.”
“Yes, I know what it is. I’ll go right up.”
Higgins appeared, grinning and with a bright birdlike look in his sharp eyes, as if he knew all that had been happening and wanted to say, “Ah, you were out with O’Hara this morning ... alone.... Well, you can’t do better, Ma’am. I hope it brings you happiness. You ought to have a man like that.”
As he took the bridle, he said, “That’s a fine animal Mr. O’Hara rides, Ma’am. I wish we had him in our stables....”
She murmured something in reply and without even waiting for coffee hastened up the dark stairs to the north wing. On the way past the row of tall deep-set windows she caught a swift glimpse of Sabine, superbly dressed and holding a bright yellow parasol over her head, moving indolently up the long drive toward the house, and again she had a sudden unaccountable sense of something melancholy, perhaps even tragic, a little way off. It was one of those quick, inexplicable waves of depression that sweeps over one like a shadow. She said to herself, “I’m depressed now because an hour ago I was too happy.”
And immediately she thought, “But it was like Aunt Cassie to have such a thought as that. I must take care or I’ll be getting to be a true Pentland ... believing that if I’m happy a calamity is soon to follow.”
She had moments of late when it seemed to her that something in the air, some power hidden in the old house itself, was changing her slowly, imperceptibly, in spite of herself.