“Women are amazingly quick. Perhaps sentiment is the wrong word; I should have said romantic.”
“What is the difference?”
“There is all the difference. The sentimentalist has no sense of humour. The romanticist generally has too much. A romanticist may possess the salt of cynicism; a sentimentalist seldom.”
Sibella had something of an intellect, and I think, perhaps, that was also a weak point, for inasmuch as it was a poorly developed sort of affair it was easily dazzled, and she would at the merest flicker from an opposing mind credit it with much that it did not possess.
I had led the conversation away from Lady Pebworth, but she brought it back again, and flattered me by insisting on learning from my own lips that I had no affection for the lady.
Fortunately she only knew of Miss Gascoyne’s existence in a vague sort of way.
“What would you do, Sibella, if I married?”
“Forbid it.”
“You think that would be effective?”
“If it were not I should never speak to you again.”