Probably Judith did, and that was why she said nothing—or, at least, in what she did say made no reply to the last assertion, but went back to the general question. She put her hand on the door-handle to suggest peroration and spoke collectedly and coldly.
"You are quite wrong, Sibyl, when you use the word 'flirtation' about me and Stephen Lyell. Cordial acquaintance is quite enough—even friendship is a little overstrained. Not but that we are very good friends, and should always keep so, only for that fool of a woman! But I shall always think somebody made mischief." She turned the door-handle to indicate the penultimate character of what was coming, but did not open the door. "And as for this Mr. Alfred Challis or 'Titus Scroop'—who is a person, by-the-bye, with whom any sort of flirtation would be simply impossible—he's just a clever playwriter without the slightest pretence to be considered a ... no!—I wasn't going to say gentleman; let me finish ... accustomed to the ways of Society." Sibyl didn't feel convinced, but kept her counsel. "And I have my own reasons for wishing to cultivate his acquaintance."
Now, surely, at this late hour of the night, and after so active a day, and with these two young ladies' respective maids wondering sotto voce on the landing outside what on earth it's all about—surely that door-handle might have turned in earnest! But we all know the fire that seems put out with a spark still chuckling in its core at the nice blaze it means to be one day. Perhaps if Sibyl had said "I ss—see" with less of suggestion that some human frailty undefined had been sighted by her shrewdness, and had commanded her sympathy; and perhaps (even more) if she had abstained from saying to herself, "I thought it was that," in a voice that was evidently intended to be heard, yet to seem inaudible—perhaps the fire would not have broken out again. As it was, the door-handle had a relapse, and its manipulator said rather sharply: "Thought it was what?"
"The Stage," was the reply. "Oh yes, Ju!—I know all about it; so you needn't look like a Tragedy Queen. Pray disgrace your family! Good-night, dear."
"Sibyl, you are a thoroughly selfish woman ... did you say why? Why—because you are indulging all your own fancies—just flinging away hundreds on all sorts of useless fads, and all the while opposing me in a reasonable wish—for it is reasonable to wish to give it a trial—because of a miserable, old-fashioned prejudice against a profession which at least is as respectable as hammering little copper pots and making little bits of fussy enamelled jewellery. I can't tell you how sick I get of hearing of it all...." Anger at mere impertinence does not involve a flush, like resentment against a charge of misdemeanour on a point of delicacy. But one can go white with anger, and Judith's change of colour may be due to it, as she says what she evidently means to be her last word. Sibyl tries to deprive it of a last word's advantage.
"If you are going to take that tone, Ju," she replies, "I think we had better talk no more about it. And how little copper pots can have anything fast or disreputable about them I don't know. But pray disgrace your family, if you can get anyone to help you—Mr. Scoop, or Challis, or anyone." Then this young lady did not play fair, for she said or as good as said that if her sister was as tired and sleepy as she herself was, she wouldn't stand there talking, but would go to bed. But even this was not so bad as adding: "And what all this has to do with Mr. Scoop's Deceased Wife's Sister I can't imagine!" The dry tone in which Judith said, "Nor I, dear!" may have conveyed her views about her sister's powers of Logic, without more enlargement—at least, she indulged in none and went away to her own bedroom rather despising herself for feeling exasperated, but knowing that she was so by the satisfaction she got from an increased indifference to what her family thought about the theatrical profession. Her stage-mania was getting the bit in its teeth. But she could find it in her heart to laugh at Sibyl for trying to support her own fads on the moral repute of little copper pots. Why, so far as that went, the little pots might be anchorites in deserts for any power they had of blemishing it.
As for "Mr. Scroop's Deceased Wife's Sister," that, she knew, was nonsense, because he had told her the name of his first wife. Or, stop a minute!—might she not have been a half-sister? Judith guessed shrewdly. But then—it occurred to her presently—would that count? She thought of this after she was in bed, and was half inclined to get up, and look up the point in her prayer-book.
The suspicion that had crossed Challis's mind in the drawing-room was confirmed by the way his companion had glanced at herself in the mirror, before answering his question about the beauty of her friend the stage-aspirant, more than by the wording of her answer. After all, the fact that a good-looking woman had refused an unqualified testimonial to the beauty of an alleged friend was very negative evidence indeed that she was all the while speaking of herself. But the glance at her reflection seemed natural enough to him under the circumstances, though he was ready to admit that, much as he had written about them, he did not understand women. His conclusion from it was supported by something not altogether natural in the tone of the answer; the substance of it might be no more than provisional modesty, to cover future confession. Had she answered that her friend had a Juno-like figure, a splendid Greek brow and nose, rich coils of dark hair, a stately column of a throat, and ample justification for evening dress whenever warranted by authority—could she have looked him in the face later and claimed the identity? Challis dwelt upon the inventory more than was needed, and decided that the semi-evasion had been skilful, and had shown that its author was superior to frivolous vanities. There was glamour about this: men persist in ascribing high qualities to beautiful women, and only concede them grudgingly to dowdies as a set-off to their unhappy plainness.
Anyhow, even if he was mistaken, his mistake would give him a sound ground for writing as much as he was inclined to write about this young lady to Marianne; and he felt, without exactly knowing why, inclined to write rather liberally about her. Perhaps, if he had had a mind for self-vivisection, he would have found that he shrank from acknowledging the reason he had hitherto flinched from writing about her to his wife; which was, briefly, that he was just too far entiché to feel at ease in telling her how much in love he had fallen with one of the daughters, and how awfully jolly she was, and how awfully jealous she, Marianne, would be if she was there to see. You know—male reader over head and ears in wedlock!—that that is what you would have written, and despatched with an authenticating photograph if one was attainable. And you would have asked for the last photo of your correspondent in return—the one with baby pulling her hair; not that beastly one yearning, with the lips slightly parted—to give as a swop to your new love; because six copies were to come from Elliott and Fry's, and we could have as many more as we wanted. But Mr. Alfred Challis was not so detached as all this; and, without absolutely suspecting it, he was not sorry to be supplied with a well-defined locus scribendi, where all analysis and justification would merge and be forgotten. He felt, with such a licence of free pen, much more ready to go to work with his long letter to Marianne about that long walk to the Rectory to-day. See what a lot he could find to tell about that Parson who wanted (or didn't) to marry his Deceased Wife's Sister! Partly on the question itself—one, of course, of the greatest interest to both—and partly, if not more, because he had just remembered that surely the name of the Parson who took on the duties for Charlotte Eldridge's reverend cousin out Clapham way was Athelstan Something; and hadn't he, the said cousin, been known to come away to this part of the world to take his friend's duties in the country and get change of air? Of course! And then, too, there was the incident of the sofa in the evening. Yes!—he would make the peep into the mirror amusing.