Page:The Relentless City.djvu/140

130 note on his shirt-cuff to inquire whether the right of presentation to the living belonged to the family.

Sybil Massington, in the meantime, had arrived in London, and while Bilton was engaged in appraising the Molesworth estate, was herself in the confessional of the wisest spinster in London. All her life she had been accustomed to knowing what she wanted, and, knowing, to getting it. But now, for the first time in matters of importance, she did not know what she wanted, and was afraid of not getting anything at all. Things in America, in fact, had gone quite stupendously awry; she was upset, angry at herself and others, and, what to her was perhaps most aggravating of all, uncertain of herself. To one usually so lucid, so intensely reasonable as she was, this was of the nature of an idiocy; it was as if she—the essential Sybil—stood by, while a sort of wraith of herself sat feeble and indifferent in a chair, unable to make up its mind about anything. She longed to take this phantom by the shoulders and shake it into briskness and activity again, open its head and dust its brain for it. But perhaps Judy could do it for her; anyhow, the need, not so much of consultation, but of confession, was urgent. She did not in the least want absolution, because she had done nothing wrong; indeed, she wanted to confess because she was incapable of doing anything at all. She had to make up her mind, and she could not; perhaps stating the problem of her indecision very clearly might, even if it did not elicit a suggestion from Judy, help her, at any rate, to see what her difficulties were more clearly. And, though indecisive, she still retained her candour, and told Judy all that had happened, exactly as it had happened.

she said in answer to some question of Judy's. A woman feels in her bones when a man is going to propose to her; only I wasn't quite ready for it, and for two days I kept him from actually asking me. Then, on the night that Mrs. Emsworth was acting there, I went