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"Oh!" said Sylvia, relieved to know that the odd look concealed no criticism, "I didn't know that anybody nowadays made such silly Victorian generalizations about woman's cattiness, anybody under old Mr. Sommerville's age, that is. And anyhow, Judith's my sister."
Sylvia, unable to meet Morrison's eyes, absorbed in the difficulty of the moment for her, unillumined by the byplay between her aunt and old Mr. Sommerville, strove for an appearance of vivacious loquacity, and cast into the conversation entirely disregarded bits of description of the fire. Sommerville's pull on his arm, was saying: "If luncheon is ready, and I'm invited, no more needs to be said.
He was too much engaged in his profession for me to intrude on him often, and perhaps his mind was too much trammelled with its details to permit his being willingly withdrawn from them. In short, he was not a person of my poor friend Sommerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the ordinary class of formalists; but a most able and excellent man.
Her life in the State University had brought her into such incessant contact with young men that the mere fact of sitting beside one in the twilight left her unmoved to a degree which Mr. Sommerville's mother would have found impossible to imagine.
What an odd circumstance, her trudging off through the woods thus with a guide of whom she knew nothing except that he was Molly Sommerville's cousin and worked a Vermont farm and had certainly the dirtiest face she had ever seen, with the exception of the coal-blackened stokers in the power-house of the University.
Sylvia, reverting to a chance remark, now said: "I never happened to hear you speak of your mother before. Does she ever come to Lydford?" He shook his head. "No, she vibrates between the Madison Avenue house and the Newport one. She's very happy in those two places. She's Mr. Sommerville's sister, you know. She's one of Morrison's devotees too. She collects under his guidance."
And anyhow, I don't ever want to play again, since I've seen Sylvia's game." She turned to the other girl, breathing quickly. "You go, Sylvia dear. I'll make Mr. Morrison's tea for him." Sylvia hesitated a barely perceptible instant, until she saw old Mr. Sommerville's eyes fixed speculatively on her. Then she stood up with an instant, cheerful alacrity. "That's awfully good of you, Molly darling!
Sommerville's views as to the ambitions of a moneyless young person, enjoying a single, brief fling in the world of young men with fortunes, it seemed certain that Sylvia's lack of tactful reticence about Arnold's ignorance could only be based on a feeling that Arnold's fortune was not big enough.
She caught a glimpse of a misty mass of white and, beside it, old Mr. Sommerville's profile, very white and nervous and determined. She did not at that time see the bridegroom at all. The ceremony, which took place far within the chancel, was long and interspersed with music from the choir.
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