Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/254

 sitting there beside him in silence, touching his hand. He was the sort of man—a man, she thought, like Michael—who needed women about him.

After a long time, he turned suddenly and asked, "This boy of Sybil's—who is he? What is he like?"

"Sabine knows about him."

"It's that which makes me afraid. . . . He's out of her world and I'm not so sure that I like it. In Sabine's world it doesn't matter who a person is or where he comes from as long as he's clever and amusing."

"I've watched him. . . . I've talked with him. I think him all that a girl could ask . . . a girl like Sybil, I mean. . . . I shouldn't recommend him to a silly girl . . . he'd give such a wife a very bad time. Besides, I don't think we can do much about it. Sybil, I think, has decided."

"Has he asked her to marry him? Has he spoken to you?"

"I don't know whether he's asked her. He hasn't spoken to me. Young men don't bother about such things nowadays."

"But Anson won't like it. There'll be trouble . . . and Cassie, too."

"Yes . . . and still, if Sybil wants him, she'll have him. I've tried to teach her that in a case like this . . . well," she made a little gesture with her white hand, "that she should let nothing make any difference."

He sat thoughtfully for a long time, and at last, without looking up and almost as if speaking to himself, he said, "There was once an elopement in the family. . . . Jared and Savina Pentland were married that way."

"But that wasn't a happy match . . . not too happy," said Olivia; and immediately she knew that she had come near to betraying herself. A word or two more and he might have trapped her. She saw that it was impossible to add the burden of the letters to these other secrets.