"Oh, we're all right." Sybil nodded gaily. "We don't want to give the show away any more than you do. And it will be rather fun to mystify the neighbourhood, and have the men coming fortune-hunting after a bit——"
"What?" thundered the general, aghast.
"They will, oh, yes, they will. Leo will look uncommonly pretty and pathetic as the rich young widow, and I don't suppose she will be inconsolable——"
"And you mean—God bless my soul!" But though General Boldero rolled his eyes, and kept up his high tone of indignant amazement, the speaker did not feel snubbed as she might have done.
"We shall have all the impecunious youths——"
"That we shan't." A relapse to fierceness.
Sybil laughed. "'Trying it on,' was all I was going to say, sir. Any one who knows you wouldn't back them for a brass farthing." There was a touch of bitterness in the last words which called forth a "Pshaw!" from the general's lips. He knew, as they all did, to what the sneer referred, and Sue, as usual, made haste to avert an explosion.
"I don't think we need fear that Leo will be in any hurry to marry again; she was very fond of poor Godfrey——"
"Then she must keep up appearances for his sake," struck in her father eagerly. "Tell her it's for his sake, mind; and see that she does it. As for that nonsense of Sybil's——" and he enlarged till he had worn out the subject.
When he left the room, the girls looked at each other. "He doesn't know Leo," said Maud at last. She was always the last to speak, it was the easiest way; Syb could rattle, and sometimes rattle did well enough with a parent who as has been said could be managed when not openly contradicted, but she preferred silence and apparent submission. She could, however, emit a sentiment when alone with her sisters. "He won't find it as easy as he thinks to get Leo to pretend. She was always a truthful little thing."