“It is to my advantage to make myself agreeable to Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne, and,” I added hastily, for I never appeared as acting from interested motives more than I could help, “I am very fond of them.”
“And very fond of Miss Gascoyne.”
Sibella’s was not the nature to exercise much control over rising jealousy.
“What nonsense! As far as that goes, you would not have much to complain of if I were to marry Miss Gascoyne.”
She looked at me with frightened eyes.
“If I thought you meant that——” she faltered.
“Well, you must remember that you and I might have fulfilled our natural destiny and married.”
Sibella laughed in a not altogether nice way.
“That would have been a very pleasant arrangement. We should have been so comfortably off, shouldn’t we?”
It gave me an advantage to pretend that it was a cause of eternal grief to me that we were not married, so I answered: