Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/97

 me. It's like something out of a dream, completely dead. . . dead all save for young Mrs. Pentland and Sybil."

Sabine smiled. "You know Sybil, then?"

"We ride together every morning. . . . We met one morning by chance along the path by the river and since then we've gone nearly every day."

"She's a charming girl. . . . She went to school in France with my daughter, Thérèse. I saw a great deal of her then."

Far back in her mind the thought occurred to her that there would be something very amusing in the prospect of Sybil married to O'Hara. It would produce such an uproar with Anson and Aunt Cassie and the other relatives. . . . A Pentland married to an Irish Roman Catholic politician!

"She is like her mother, isn't she?" asked O'Hara, sitting forward a bit on his chair. He had a way of sitting thus, in the tense, quiet alertness of a cat.

"Very like her mother. . . . Her mother is a remarkable woman . . . a charming woman . . . also, I might say, what is the rarest of all things, a really good and generous woman."

"I've thought that. . . . I've seen her a half-dozen times. I asked her to help me in planting the garden here at the cottage because I knew she had a passion for gardens. And she didn't refuse . . . though she scarcely knew me. She came over and helped me with it. I saw her then and came to know her. But when that was finished, she went back to Pentlands and I haven't seen her since. It's almost as if she meant to avoid me. Sometimes I feel sorry for her. . . . It must be a queer life for a woman like that . . . young and beautiful."

"She has a great deal to occupy her at Pentlands. And it's true that it's not a very fascinating life. Still, I'm sure she couldn't bear being pitied. . . . She's the last woman in the world to want pity."