“Not Stephen Siward?”
“To marry? No. To enjoy, yes.... Grace, I have had such a good time with him; you don't know! He is such a boy—sometimes; and I—I believe that I am rather good for him.... Not that I'd ever again let him do that sort of thing.... Besides, his curiosity is quenched; I am the sort he supposed. Now he's found out he will be nice.... It's been days since I've had a talk with him. He tried to, but I wouldn't. Besides, the major has said nasty things about him when Howard was present; nothing definite, only hints, smiling silences, innuendoes on the verge of matters rather unfit; and I had nothing definite to refute. I could not even appear to understand or notice—it was all done in such a horridly vague way. But it only made me like him; and no doubt that actress he took to the Patroons is better company than he finds in nine places out of ten among his own sort.”
“Oh,” said Grace Ferrall slowly, “if that is the way you feel, I don't see why you shouldn't play with Mr. Siward whenever you like.”
“Nor I. I've been a perfect fool not to.... Howard hates him.”
“How do you know?”
“What a question! A woman knows such things. Then, you remember that caricature—so dreadfully like Howard? Howard has no sense of humour; he detests such things. It was the most dreadful thing that Mr. Siward could have done to him.”
“Meddled again!” groaned Grace. “Doesn't Howard know that I did that?”
“Yes, but nothing I can say alters his conviction that the likeness was intended. You know it was a likeness! And if Mr. Siward had not told me that it was not intended, I should never have believed it to be an accident.”
After a prolonged silence Sylvia said, overcarelessly: “I don't quite understand Howard. With me anger lasts but a moment, and then I'm open to overtures for peace... I think Howard's anger lasts.”
“It does,” said Grace. “He was a muff as a boy—a prig with a prig's memory under all his shallow, showy surface. I'm frank with you; I never could take my cousin either respectfully or seriously, but I've known him to take his own anger so seriously that years after he has visited it upon those who had really wronged him. And he is equipped for retaliation if he chooses. That fortune of his reaches far.... Not that I think him capable of using such a power to satisfy a mere personal dislike. Howard has principles, loads of them. But—the weapon is there.”