"There is nothing for Marianne to mind, Sibyl."
Sibyl changes her ground unscrupulously. "It doesn't matter to me as long as I'm not his wife. But a hansom-cab is a hansom-cab, and you know it as well as I do."
"I know it, dear." Judith speaks serenely. The attack is too puerile to call for resentment. "They try one's nerves and destroy one's skirts, getting in and out."
Sibyl's style has not been worthy of her Square, or Mr. Elphinstone. There was too much of the lowlier air of Seven Dials in the suggestion that a hansom-cab would promote an irregular flirtation to do more than provoke a smile. Charlotte Eldridge, even, would have condemned it as the bald scoff of inexperience.
But there was more maturity and force in Sibyl's next speech. "I want to know, are you going to tell the madre about it or not?" Judith flushed angrily as she answered her with: "I have told you, Sibyl, that as soon as there is something to tell, I will tell it at once to anyone it concerns. Mamma certainly!"
"How far has it gone?—that's what I want to find out."
"How far has what gone?"
"You needn't look so furious, Ju. Do let's talk quietly. You know perfectly well what I mean. This talk about a trial-performance." The imputation that Judith looked furious was a sporting venture. No doubt she felt furious, thought Sibyl; and how was she to know she didn't show it?
"I told you days ago there was no talk of a trial-performance."
Sibyl restrained herself visibly—too visibly for the prospects of peace. After some thirty seconds of self-command, she reworded her question mechanically. "The talk about something that was not to be a trial-performance." The forms of the court were complied with, without admission of previous lack of clearness. This was shown in a parti pris of facial immobility. A licked lip, a scratched nose, an eye-blink, would have marred its dramatic force.