"You're scorching, Ju. Or you will be directly." So spoke Sibyl, reading a letter attentively, and speaking through her absorption as to a world without. "Who was that?... No—don't make the tea yet, Elphinstone. Coffee for me. You're coffee, I suppose, Ju?..."
"Yes, coffee. Who was what?"
"Who was that in your cab last night?... Well, you made noise enough! Of course I could hear! I'm not deaf." The letter is read by now, being short, and Sibyl has come out into the world to hear the answer to her question.
But Judith is deep in half-a-quire of illegibility, after an episode of a fork-point, and some impatience. "It's an old dress," she says, and then ignores Sibyl altogether for a term, in favour of the letter. Her eyebrows had moved in connection with the cab-inquiry, up to the point of detection by a sharp younger sister. "I had no cab, dear," she says at last. "I came in Mr. Challis's cab." This is quite a long time after.
"Has Mr. Challis a cab?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean, Sib."
Sibyl knows, but has become absorbed in a second letter. So she leaves her tongue, as her representative, to say fragmentarily, "Hansom-cab off the rank," and then retires altogether into the letter for a moment. However, she comes out presently to say, "The question is, was it Mr. Challis? I suppose it was, though, or it couldn't have been Mr. Challis's cab ... oh no!—I'm not finding fault. It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned."
The respectable domestics have been in momentary abeyance, and the conversation has been more suggestive than it would have been in their presence. The reappearance of Mr. Elphinstone, with the gist of two breakfasts, causes an automatic adjournment of the subject. The day's appointments make up the talk, during his presence.
But so late was the quorum of the total breakfast—in fact, it was doubtful whether two of the constituent cujusses would appear at all—that Sibyl got ample opportunity for resuming the conversation exactly where it left off, at least a quarter-of-an-hour having elapsed.
"It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned," she repeated. "As long as Marianne doesn't mind!" The Christian name may have been an intentional impertinence.