1Each time that Olivia rose at dawn to ride out with Sybil and meet O’Hara at the old gravel-pit, the simple excursion became more glamorous to her. There was a youth in the contact with Sybil and the Irishman which she had almost forgotten, a feeling of strength for which she had long been hungering. It was, she found, a splendid way to begin the day—in the cool of the morning, riding away over the drenched grass; it made a freshening contrast to the rest of a day occupied largely by such old people as her father-in-law and Anson (who was really an old man) and the old woman in the north wing and by the persistent fluttering attacks of Aunt Cassie. And Olivia, who was not without a secret vanity, began to notice herself in the mirror ... that her eyes were brighter and her skin was more clear. She saw that she was even perhaps beautiful, and that the riding-habit became her in a romantic fashion.

2She knew, too, riding across the fields between Sybil and O’Hara, that he sometimes watched her with a curious bright light in his blue eyes. He said nothing; he betrayed in no way the feeling behind all that sudden, quiet declaration on the terrace of Brook Cottage. She began to see that he was (as Sabine had discovered almost at once) a very clever and dangerous man. It was not alone because of the strange, almost physical, effect he had upon people—an effect which was almost as if his presence took possession of you completely—but because he had patience and knew how to be silent. If he had rushed in, recklessly and clumsily, everything would have been precipitated and ruined at once. There would have been a scene ending with his dismissal and Olivia, perhaps, would have been free; but he had never touched her. It was simply that he was always there, assuring her in some mysterious way that his emotions had not changed, that he still wanted her more than anything in all the world. And to a woman who was romantic by nature and had never known any romance, it was a dangerous method.

3There came a morning when, waiting by the gravel-pit, O’Hara saw that there was only one rider coming toward him across the fields from Pentlands. At first it occurred to him that it must be Sybil coming alone, without her mother, and the old boredom and despair engulfed him swiftly. It was only when the rider came nearer and he saw the white star in the forehead of her horse that he knew it was Olivia herself. That she came alone, knowing what he had already told her, he took as a sign of immense importance.

4This time he did not wait or ride slowly toward her. He galloped impatiently as a boy across the wet fields to meet her.

5She had the old look of radiance about her and a shyness, too, that made her seem at first a trifle cool and withdrawn. She told him quietly, “Sybil didn’t come this morning. She went out very early to fish with Jean de Cyon. The mackerel are beginning to run in the open water off the marshes.”

6There was an odd, strained silence and O’Hara said, “He’s a nice boy ... de Cyon.” And then, with a heroic effort to overcome the shyness which she always managed to impose upon him, he said in a low voice, “But I’m glad she didn’t come. I’ve wanted it to be like this all along.”

7She did not say archly that he must not talk in this vein. It was a part of her fascination that she was too honest and intelligent not to dispense with such coquetry. He had had enough of coquetry from cheap women and had wearied of it long ago. Besides, she had wanted it “like this” herself and she knew that with O’Hara it was silly to pretend, because sooner or later he always found her out. They were not children, either of them. They both knew what they were doing, that it was a dangerous, even a reckless thing; and yet the very sense of excitement made the adventure as irresistible to the one as to the other.

8For a little time they rode in silence, watching the dark hoofs of the horses as they sent up little showers of glittering dew from the knee-deep grass and clover, and presently as they turned out of the fields into the path that led into the birch woods, he laughed and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”

9Smiling, she replied, “I wouldn’t sell them for millions.”

10“They must be very precious.”

11“Perhaps ... precious to me, and to no one else.”

12“Not to any one at all....”

13“No.... I don’t think they’d interest any one. They’re not too cheerful.”

14At this he fell silent again, with an air of brooding and disappointment. For a time she watched him, and presently she said, “You mustn’t sulk on a morning like this.”

15“I’m not sulking.... I was only ... thinking.”

16She laughed. “A penny for your thoughts.”

17He did not laugh. He spoke with a sudden intensity. “They, too, are worth a million ... more than that ... only I’ll share them with you. I wouldn’t share them with any one else.”

18At the sound of his voice, a silly wave of happiness swept through Olivia. She thought, “I’m being young and ridiculous and enjoying myself.”

19Aloud she said, “I haven’t a penny, but if you’ll trust me until to-morrow?”

20And then he turned to her abruptly, the shyness gone and in its place an emotion close to irritation and anger. “Why buy them?” he asked. “You know well enough what they are. You haven’t forgotten what I told you on the terrace at Brook Cottage.... It’s grown more true every day ... all of it.” When he saw that she had become suddenly grave, he said, “And what about you?”

21“You know how impossible it is.”

22“Nothing is impossible ... nothing. Besides, I don’t mean the difficulties. Those will come later.... I only mean your own feelings.”

23“Can’t you see that I like you?... I must like you else I wouldn’t have come alone this morning.”

24“Like me,” he echoed with bitterness. “I’m not interested in having you like me!” And when she made no reply, he added, almost savagely, “Why do you keep me away from you? Why do you always put a little wall about yourself?”

25“Do I?” she asked, stupidly, and with a sense of pain.

26“You are cool and remote even when you laugh.”

27“I don’t want to be—I hate cold people.”

28For a moment she caught a quick flash of the sudden bad temper which sometimes betrayed him. “It’s because you’re so damned ladylike. Sometimes I wish you were a servant or a scrub-woman.”

29“And then I wouldn’t be the same—would I?”

30He looked up quickly, as if to make a sudden retort, and then, checking himself, rode on in silence. Stealing a glance at him, Olivia caught against the wall of green a swift image of the dark, stubborn tanned head—almost, she thought, like the head of a handsome bull—bent a little, thoughtfully, almost sadly; and again a faint, weak feeling attacked her—the same sensation that had overcome her on the night of her son’s death when she sat regarding the back of Anson’s head and not seeing it at all. She thought, “Why is it that this man—a stranger—seems nearer to me than Anson has ever been? Why is it that I talk to him in a way I never talked to Anson?” And a curious feeling of pity seized her at the sight of the dark head. In a quick flash of understanding she saw him as a little boy searching awkwardly for something which he did not understand; she wanted to stroke the thick, dark hair in a comforting fashion.

31He was talking again. “You know nothing about me,” he was saying. “And sometimes I think you ought to know it all.” Looking at her quickly he asked, “Could you bear to hear it ... a little of it?”

32She smiled at him, certain that in some mysterious, clairvoyant fashion she had penetrated the very heart of his mood, and she thought, “How sentimental I’m being ... how sickeningly sentimental!” Yet it was a rich, luxuriant mood in which her whole being relaxed and bathed itself. She thought again, “Why should I not enjoy this? I’ve been cautious all my life.”

33And seeing her smile, he began to talk, telling her, as they rode toward the rising sun, the story of his humble origin and of those early bitter days along India Wharf, and from time to time she said, “I understand. My own childhood wasn’t happy,” or, “Go on, please. It fascinates me ... more than you can imagine.”

34So he went on, telling her the story of the long scar on his temple, telling her as he had known he would, of his climb to success, confessing everything, even the things of which he had come to be a little ashamed, and betraying from time to time the bitterness which afflicts those who have made their own way against great odds. The shrewd, complex man became as naïve as a little boy; and she understood, as he had known she would. It was miraculous how right he had been about her.

35Lost in this mood, they rode on and on as the day rose and grew warm, enveloped all the while in the odor of the dark, rich, growing thicket and the acrid smell of the tall marshferns, until Olivia, glancing at her watch, said, “It is very late. I shall have missed the family breakfast.” She meant really that Anson would have gone up to Boston by now and that she was glad—only it was impossible to say a thing like that.

36At the gravel-pit, she bade him good-by, and turning her mare toward Pentlands she felt the curious effect of his nearness slipping away from her with each new step; it was as if the hot August morning were turning cold. And when she came in sight of the big red brick house sitting so solidly among the ancient elms, she thought, “I must never do this again. I have been foolish.” And again, “Why should I not do it? Why should I not be happy? They have no right to any claim upon me.”

37But there was one claim, she knew; there was Sybil. She must not make a fool of herself for the sake of Sybil. She must do nothing to interfere with what had been taking place this very morning in the small fishing-boat far out beyond the marshes somewhere near the spot where Savina Pentland had been drowned. She knew well enough why Sybil had chosen to go fishing instead of riding; it was so easy to look at the girl and at young de Cyon and know what was happening there. She herself had no right to stand in the way of this other thing which was so much younger and fresher, so much more nearly perfect.

38As she put her mare over the low wall by the stables she looked up and chanced to see a familiar figure in rusty black standing in the garden, as if she had been there all the while looking out over the meadows, watching them. As she drew near, Aunt Cassie came forward with an expression of anxiety on her face, saying in a thin, hushed voice, as if she might be overheard, “I thought you’d never come back, Olivia dear. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

39Aware from the intense air of mystery that some new calamity had occurred, Olivia replied, “I was riding with O’Hara. We went too far and it was too hot to hurry the horses.”

40“I know,” said Aunt Cassie. “I saw you.” (“Of course she would,” thought Olivia. “Does anything ever escape her?”) “It’s about her. She’s been violent again this morning and Miss Egan says you may be able to do something. She keeps raving about something to do with the attic and Sabine.”

41“Yes, I know what it is. I’ll go right up.”

42Higgins appeared, grinning and with a bright birdlike look in his sharp eyes, as if he knew all that had been happening and wanted to say, “Ah, you were out with O’Hara this morning ... alone.... Well, you can’t do better, Ma’am. I hope it brings you happiness. You ought to have a man like that.”

43As he took the bridle, he said, “That’s a fine animal Mr. O’Hara rides, Ma’am. I wish we had him in our stables....”

44She murmured something in reply and without even waiting for coffee hastened up the dark stairs to the north wing. On the way past the row of tall deep-set windows she caught a swift glimpse of Sabine, superbly dressed and holding a bright yellow parasol over her head, moving indolently up the long drive toward the house, and again she had a sudden unaccountable sense of something melancholy, perhaps even tragic, a little way off. It was one of those quick, inexplicable waves of depression that sweeps over one like a shadow. She said to herself, “I’m depressed now because an hour ago I was too happy.”

45And immediately she thought, “But it was like Aunt Cassie to have such a thought as that. I must take care or I’ll be getting to be a true Pentland ... believing that if I’m happy a calamity is soon to follow.”

46She had moments of late when it seemed to her that something in the air, some power hidden in the old house itself, was changing her slowly, imperceptibly, in spite of herself.

47Miss Egan met her outside the door, with the fixed eternal smile which to-day seemed to Olivia the sort of smile that the countenance of Fate itself might wear.

48“The old lady is more quiet,” she said. “Higgins helped me and we managed to bind her in the bed so that she couldn’t harm herself. It’s surprising how much strength she has in her poor thin body.” She explained that old Mrs. Pentland kept screaming, “Sabine! Sabine!” for Mrs. Callendar and that she kept insisting on being allowed to go into the attic.

49“It’s the old idea that she’s lost something up there,” said Miss Egan. “But it’s probably only something she’s imagined.” Olivia was silent for a moment. “I’ll go and search,” she said. “It might be there is something and if I could find it, it would put an end to these spells.”

50She found them easily, almost at once, now that there was daylight streaming in at the windows of the cavernous attic. They lay stuffed away beneath one of the great beams ... a small bundle of ancient yellowed letters which had been once tied together with a bit of mauve ribbon since torn in haste by some one who thrust them in this place of concealment. They had been opened carelessly and in haste, for the moldering paper was all cracked and torn along the edges. The ink, violet once, had turned to a dirty shade of brown.

51Standing among the scattered toys left by Jack and Sybil the last time they had played house, Olivia held the letters one by one up to the light. There were eleven in all and each one was addressed to Mrs. J. Pentland, at Pentlands. Eight of them had been sent through the Boston post-office and the other three bore no stamps of any kind, as if they had been sent by messengers or in a bouquet or between the leaves of a book. The handwriting was that of a man, large, impetuous, sprawling, which showed a tendency to blur the letters together in a headlong, impatient way.

52She thought at once, “They are addressed to Mrs. J. Pentland, which means Mrs. Jared Pentland. Anson will be delighted, for these must be the letters which passed between Savina Pentland and her cousin, Toby Cane. Anson needed them to complete the book.”

53And then it occurred to her that there was something strange about the letters—in their having been hidden and perhaps found by the old lady belowstairs and then hidden away a second time. Old Mrs. Pentland must have found them there nearly forty years ago, when they still allowed her to wander about the house. Perhaps it had been on one of those rainy days when Anson and Sabine had come into the attic to play in this very corner with these same old toys—the days when Sabine refused to pretend that muddy water was claret. And now the old lady was remembering the discovery after all these years because the return of Sabine and the sound of her name had lighted some train of long-forgotten memories.

54Seating herself on a broken, battered old trunk, she opened the first of the letters reverently so as not to dislodge the bits of violet sealing-wax that still clung to the edges, and almost at once she read with a swift sense of shock:

55Carissima,

56I waited last night in the cottage until eleven and when you didn’t come I knew he had not gone to Salem, after all, and was still there at Pentlands with you....

57She stopped reading. She understood it now.... The scamp Toby Cane had been more than merely a cousin to Savina Pentland; he had been her lover and that was why she had hidden the letters away beneath the beams of the vast unfinished attic, intending perhaps to destroy them one day. And then she had been drowned before there was time and the letters lay in their hiding-place until John Pentland’s wife had discovered them one day by chance, only to hide them again, forgetting in the poor shocked mazes of her mind what they were or where they were hidden. They were the letters which Anson had been searching for.

58But she saw at once that Anson would never use the letters in his book, for he would never bring into the open a scandal in the Pentland family, even though it was a scandal which had come to an end, tragically, nearly a century earlier and was now almost pure romance. She saw, of course, that a love affair between so radiant a creature as Savina Pentland and a scamp like Toby Cane would seem rather odd in a book called “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.” Perhaps it was better not to speak of the letters at all. Anson would manage somehow to destroy all the value there was in them; he would sacrifice truth to the gods of Respectability and Pretense.

59Thrusting the letters into her pocket, she descended the dark stairway, and in the north wing Miss Egan met her to ask, almost with an air of impatience, “I suppose you didn’t find anything?”

60“No,” said Olivia quickly, “nothing which could possibly have interested her.”

61“It’s some queer idea she’s hatched up,” replied Miss Egan, and looked at Olivia as if she doubted the truth of what she had said.

62She did not go downstairs at once. Instead, she went to her own room and after bathing, seated herself in the chaise longue by the open window above the terrace, prepared to read the letters one by one. From below there arose a murmur of voices, one metallic and hard, the other nervous, thin, and high-pitched—Sabine’s and Aunt Cassie’s—as they sat on the terrace in acid conversation, each trying to outstay the other. Listening, Olivia decided that she was a little weary of them both this morning; it was the first time it had ever occurred to her that in a strange way there was a likeness between two women who seemed so different. That curious pair, who hated each other so heartily, had the same way of trying to pry into her life.

63None of the letters bore any dates, so she fell to reading them in the order in which they had been found, beginning with the one which read:

64Carissima,

65I waited last night in the cottage until eleven and when you didn’t come I knew he had not gone to Salem, after all, and, was still there at Pentlands with you....

66She read on:

67It’s the thought of his being there beside you, even taking possession of you sometimes, that I can’t bear. I see him sitting there in the drawing-room, looking at you—eating you with his eyes and pretending all the while that he is above the lusts of the flesh. The flesh! The flesh! You and I, dearest, know the glories of the flesh. Sometimes I think I’m a coward not to kill him at once.

68For God’s sake, get rid of him somehow to-night. I can’t pass another evening alone in the dark gloomy cottage waiting in vain. It is more than I can bear to sit there knowing that every minute, every second, may bring the sound of your step. Be merciful to me. Get rid of him somehow.

69I have not touched a drop of anything since I last saw you. Are you satisfied with that?

70I am sending this in a book by black Hannah. She will wait for an answer.

71Slowly, as she read on and on through the mazes of the impetuous, passionate writing, the voices from the terrace below, the one raised now and a little angry, the other still metallic, hard and indifferent, grew more and more distant until presently she did not hear them at all and in the place of the sound her senses received another impression—that of a curious physical glow, stealing slowly through her whole body. It was as if there lay in that faded brown writing a smoldering fire that had never wholly died out and would never be extinguished until the letters themselves had been burned into ashes.

72Word by word, line by line, page by page, the whole tragic, passionate legend came to recreate itself, until near the end she was able to see the three principal actors in it with the reality of life, as if they had never died at all but had gone on living in this old house, perhaps in this very room where she sat ... the very room which once must have belonged to Savina Pentland.

73She saw the husband, that Jared Pentland of whom no portrait existed because he would never spend money on such a luxury, as he must have been in life—a sly man, shrewd and pious and avaricious save when the strange dark passion for his wife made of him an unbalanced creature. And Savina Pentland herself was there, as she looked out of the Ingres portrait—dark, voluptuous, reckless, with her bad enticing eyes—a woman who might easily be the ruin of a man like Jared Pentland. And somehow she was able to get a clear and vivid picture of the writer of those smoldering letters—a handsome scamp of a lover, dark like his cousin Savina, and given to drinking and gambling. But most of all she was aware of that direct, unashamed and burning passion that never had its roots in this stony New England soil beyond the windows of Pentlands. A man who frankly glorified the flesh! A waster! A seducer! And yet a man capable of this magnificent fire which leaped up from the yellow pages and warmed her through and through. It occurred to her then for the first time that there was something heroic and noble and beautiful in a passion so intense. For a moment she was even seized by the feeling that reading these letters was a kind of desecration.

74They revealed, too, how Jared Pentland had looked upon his beautiful wife as a fine piece of property, an investment which gave him a sensual satisfaction and also glorified his house and dinner-table. (What Sabine called the “lower middle-class sense of property.”) He must have loved her and hated her at once, in the way Higgins loved and hated the handsome red mare. He must have been proud of her and yet hated her because she possessed so completely the power of making a fool of him. The whole story moved against a background of family ... the Pentland family. There were constant references to cousins and uncles and aunts and their suspicions and interference.

75“It must have begun,” thought Olivia, “even in those days.”

76Out of the letters she learned that the passion had begun in Rome when Savina Pentland was sitting for her portrait by Ingres. Toby Cane had been there with her and afterwards she had gone with him to his lodgings; and when they had returned to the house at Durham (almost new then and the biggest country seat in all New England) they had met in the cottage—Brook Cottage, which still stood there within sight of Olivia’s window—Brook Cottage, which after the drowning had been bought by Sabine’s grandfather and then fallen into ruins and been restored again by the too-bright, vulgar, resplendent touch of O’Hara. It was an immensely complicated and intricate story which went back, back into the past and seemed to touch them all here in Durham.

77“The roots of life at Pentlands,” thought Olivia, “go down, down into the past. There are no new branches, no young, vigorous shoots.”

78She came at length to the last of the letters, which had buried in its midst the terrible revealing lines—

79If you knew what delight it gives me to have you write that the child is ours beyond any doubt, that there cannot be the slightest doubt of it! The baby belongs to us ... to us alone! It has nothing to do with him. I could not bear the idea of his thinking that the child is his if it was not that it makes your position secure. The thought tortures me but I am able to bear it because it leaves you safe and above suspicion.

80Slowly, thoughtfully, as if unable to believe her eyes, she reread the lines through again, and then placed her hands against her head with a gesture of feeling suddenly weak and out of her mind.

81She tried to think clearly. “Savina Pentland never had but one child, so far as I know ... never but one. And that must have been Toby Cane’s child.”

82There could be no doubt. It was all there, in writing. The child was the child of Toby Cane and a woman who was born Savina Dalgedo. He was not a Pentland and none of his descendants had been Pentlands ... not one.

83They were not Pentlands at all save as the descendants of Savina and her lover had married among the Brahmins where Pentland blood was in every family. They were not Pentlands by blood and yet they were Pentlands beyond any question, in conduct, in point of view, in tradition. It occurred to Olivia for the first time how immense and terrible a thing was that environment, that air which held them all enchanted ... all the cloud of prejudices and traditions and prides and small anxieties. It was a world so set, so powerful, so iron-bound that it had made Pentlands of people like Anson and Aunt Cassie, even like her father-in-law. It made Pentlands of people who were not Pentlands at all. She saw it now as an overwhelming, terrifying power that was a part of the old house. It stood rooted in the very soil of all the landscape that spread itself beyond her windows.

84And in the midst of this realization she had a swift impulse to laugh, hysterically, for the picture of Anson had come to her suddenly ... Anson pouring his whole soul into that immense glorification to be known as “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

85Slowly, as the first shock melted away a little, she began to believe that the yellowed bits of paper were a sort of infernal machine, an instrument with the power of shattering a whole world. What was she to do with this thing—this curious symbol of a power that always won every struggle in one way or another, directly as in the case of Savina and her lover, or by taking its vengeance upon body or soul as it had done in the case of Aunt Cassie’s poor, prying, scheming mind? And there was, too, the dark story of Horace Pentland, and the madness of the old woman in the north wing, and even those sudden terrible bouts of drinking which made so fine a man as John Pentland into something very near to a beast.

86It was as if a light of blinding clarity had been turned upon all the long procession of ancestors. She saw now that if “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony” was to have any value at all as truth it must be rewritten in the light of the struggle between the forces glorified by that drunken scamp Toby Cane and this other terrible force which seemed to be all about her everywhere, pressing even herself slowly into its own mold. It was an old struggle between those who chose to find their pleasure in this world and those who looked for the vague promise of a glorified future existence.

87She could see Anson writing in his book, “In the present generation (192-) there exists Cassandra Pentland Struthers (Mrs. Edward Cane Struthers), a widow who has distinguished herself by her devotion to the Episcopal Church and to charity and good works. She resides in winter in Boston and in summer at her country house near Durham on the land claimed from the wilderness by the first Pentland, distinguished founder of the American family.”

88Yes, Anson would write just those words in his book. He would describe thus the old woman who sat belowstairs hoping all the while that Olivia would descend bearing the news of some new tragedy ... that virginal old woman who had ruined the whole life of her husband and kept poor half-witted Miss Peavey a prisoner for nearly thirty years.

89The murmur of voices died away presently and Olivia, looking out of the window, saw that it was Aunt Cassie who had won this time. She was standing in the garden looking down the drive with that malignant expression which sometimes appeared on her face in moments when she thought herself alone. Far down the shadow-speckled drive, the figure of Sabine moved indolently away in the direction of Brook Cottage. Sabine, too, belonged in a way to the family; she had grown up enveloped in the powerful tradition which made Pentlands of people who were not Pentlands at all. Perhaps (thought Olivia) the key to Sabine’s restless, unhappy existence also lay in the same dark struggle. Perhaps if one could penetrate deeply enough in the long family history one would find there the reasons for Sabine’s hatred of this Durham world and the reasons why she had returned to a people she disliked with all the bitter, almost fanatic passion of her nature. There was in Sabine an element of cold cruelty.

90At the sight of Olivia coming down the steps into the garden, Aunt Cassie turned and moved forward quickly with a look of expectancy, asking, “And how is the poor thing?”

91And at Olivia’s answer, “She’s quiet now ... sleeping. It’s all passed,” the looked changed to one of disappointment.

92She said, with an abysmal sigh, “Ah, she will go on forever. She’ll be alive long after I’ve gone to join dear Mr. Struthers.”

93“Invalids are like that,” replied Olivia, by way of saying something. “They take such care of themselves.” And almost at once, she thought, “Here I am playing the family game, pretending that she’s not mad but only an invalid.”

94She had no feeling of resentment against the busy old woman; indeed it seemed to her at times that she had almost an affection for Aunt Cassie—the sort of affection one has for an animal or a bit of furniture which has been about almost as long as one can remember. And at the moment the figure of Aunt Cassie, the distant sight of Sabine, the bright garden full of flowers ... all these things seemed to her melodramatic and unreal, for she was still living in the Pentlands of Savina and Toby Cane. It was impossible to fix her attention on Aunt Cassie and her flutterings.

95The old lady was saying, “You all seem to have grown very fond of this man O’Hara.”

96(What was she driving at now?) Aloud, Olivia said, “Why not? He’s agreeable, intelligent ... even distinguished in his way.”

97“Yes,” said Aunt Cassie. “I’ve been discussing him with Sabine, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I may have been wrong about him. She thinks him a clever man with a great future.” There was a pause and she added with an air of making a casual observation, “But what about his past? I mean where does he come from.”

98“I know all about it. He’s been telling me. That’s why I was late this morning.”

99For a time Aunt Cassie was silent, as if weighing some deep problem. At last she said, “I was wondering about seeing too much of him. He has a bad reputation with women.... At least, so I’m told.”

100Olivia laughed. “After all, Aunt Cassie, I’m a grown woman. I can look out for myself.”

101“Yes.... I know.” She turned with a disarming smile of Christian sweetness. “I don’t want you to think that I’m interfering, Olivia. It’s the last thing I’d think of doing. But I was considering your own good. It’s harmless enough, I’m sure. No one would ever think otherwise, knowing you, my dear. But it’s what people will say. There was a scandal I believe about eight years ago ... a road-house scandal!” She said this with an air of great suffering, as if the words “road-house scandal” seared her lips.

102“I suppose so. Most men ... politicians, I mean ... have scandals connected with their names. It’s part of the business, Aunt Cassie.”

103And she kept thinking with amazement of the industry of the old lady—that she should have taken the trouble of going far back into O’Hara’s past to find some definite thing against him. She did not doubt the ultimate truth of Aunt Cassie’s insinuation. Aunt Cassie did not lie deliberately; there was always a grain of truth in her implications, though sometimes the poor grain lay buried so deeply beneath exaggerations that it was almost impossible to discover it. And a thing like that might easily be true about O’Hara. With a man like him you couldn’t expect women to play the rôle they played with a man like Anson.

104“It’s only on account of what people will say,” repeated Aunt Cassie.

105“I’ve almost come to the conclusion that what people say doesn’t really matter any longer....”

106Aunt Cassie began suddenly to pick a bouquet from the border beside her. “Oh, it’s not you I’m worrying about, Olivia dear. But we have to consider others sometimes.... There’s Sybil and Anson, and even the very name of Pentland. There’s never been any such suspicion attached to it ... ever.”

107It was incredible (thought Olivia) that any one would make such a statement, incredible anywhere else in the world. She wanted to ask, “What about your brother and old Mrs. Soames?” And in view of those letters that lay locked in her dressing-table....

108At that moment lunch was announced by Peters’ appearance in the doorway. Olivia turned to Aunt Cassie, “You’re staying, of course.”

109“No, I must go. You weren’t expecting me.”

110So Olivia began the ancient game, played for so many years, of pressing Aunt Cassie to stay to lunch.

111“It makes no difference,” she said, “only another plate.” And so on through a whole list of arguments that she had memorized long ago. And at last Aunt Cassie, with the air of having been pressed beyond her endurance, yielded, and to Peters, who had also played the game for years, Olivia said, “Lay another place for Mrs. Struthers.”

112She had meant to stay all along. Lunching out saved both money and trouble, for Miss Peavey ate no more than a bird, at least not openly; and, besides, there were things she must find out at Pentlands, and other things which she must plan. In truth, wild horses could not have dragged her away.

113As they entered the house, Aunt Cassie, carrying the bouquet she had plucked, said casually, “I met the Mannering boy on the road this morning and told him to come in to-night. I thought you wouldn’t mind. He’s very fond of Sybil, you know.”

114“No, of course not,” replied Olivia. “I don’t mind. But I’m afraid Sybil isn’t very interested in him.”