A tall girl, with a slim vase in her hand, drifted in upon their group like an apparition. She had heavy black eyebrows with beautiful blue eyes under them, full of an intensity unrelieved by humour.
“Aunty!” she said severely, “have you been telling?”
“Only Mr. and Mrs. Sewell, Sibyl,” said Miss Vane. “Their knowing won't hurt. He'll never know it.”
“If he hears you laughing, he'll know it's about him. He's in the kitchen, now. He's come in the back way. Do be quiet.” She had given her hand without other greeting in her preoccupation to each of the Sewells in turn, and now she passed out of the room.
XI.
“What makes Lemuel such a gift,” said Miss Vane, in a talk which she had with Sewell a month later, “is that he is so supplementary.”
“Do you mean just in the supplementary sense of the term?”
“Well, not in the fifth-wheel sense. I mean that he supplements us, all and singular—if you will excuse the legal exactness.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Sewell; “I should like even more exactness.”