Long before the close of the piece, Rolfe had ceased to listen, his thoughts drifting hither and hither on a turbid flood of emotion.  During the last passage —­ Allegro molto leggieramente —­ he felt a movement round about him as a general relief, and when, on the last note, there broke forth (familiar ambiguity) sounds of pleasure and of applause, he at once stood up.  But he had no intention of pressing into the throng that rapidly surrounded the musicians.  Seeing that Mr. Redgrave had vacated his place, whilst Mrs. Carnaby remained seated, he stepped forward to speak with his friend’s wife.  She smiled up at him, and lifted a gloved finger.

‘No!  Please don’t!’

‘Not sit down by you?’

’Oh, certainly.  But I saw condolence in your face, and I’m tired of it.  Besides, it would be mere hypocrisy in you.’

Harvey gave a silent laugh.  He had tried to understand Sibyl Carnaby, and at different times had come to very different conclusions regarding her.  All women puzzled, and often disconcerted, him; with Sibyl he could never talk freely, knowing not whether to dislike or to admire her.  He was not made on the pattern of Cyrus Redgrave, who probably viewed womankind with instinctive contempt, yet pleased all with the flattery of his homage.

‘Well, then, we won’t talk of it,’ he said, noticing, in the same moment, that her person did not lack the adornment of jewels.  Perhaps she had happened to be wearing these things on the evening of the robbery; but Rolfe felt a conviction that, under any circumstances, Sibyl would not be without rings and bracelets.

‘They certainly improve,’ she remarked, indicating the quartet with the tip of her fan.

Her opinions were uttered with calm assurance, whatever the subject.  An infinite self-esteem, so placid that it never suggested the vulgarity of conceit, shone in her large eyes and dwelt upon the beautiful curve of her lips.  No face could be of purer outline, of less sensual suggestiveness; it wore at times an air of cold abstraction which was all but austerity.  Rolfe imagined her the most selfish of women, thought her incapable of sentiment; yet how was her marriage to be accounted for, save by supposing that she fell in love with Hugh Carnaby?  Such a woman might surely have sold herself to great advantage; and yet —­ odd incongruity —­ she did not impress one as socially ambitious.  Her mother, the ever-youthful widow, sped from assembly to assembly, unable to live save in the whirl of fashion; not so Sibyl.  Was she too proud, too self-centred?  And what ambition did she nourish?

Or was it all an illusion of the senses?  Suppose her a mere graven image, hollow, void.  Call her merely a handsome woman, with the face of some remarkable ancestress, with just enough of warmth to be subdued by the vigorous passion of such a fine fellow as Carnaby.  On the whole, Rolfe preferred this hypothesis.  He had never heard her say anything really bright, or witty, or significant.  But Hugh spoke of her fine qualities of head and heart; Alma Frothingham made her an exemplar, and would not one woman see through the vacuous pretentiousness of another?