you . . . that you're the only man I've ever loved . . . even the smallest bit."
"Mrs. Callendar will help us. . . . She wants it."
"Oh, Sabine. . . ." She was startled. "You haven't spoken to her? You haven't told her anything?"
"No. . . . But you don't need to tell her such things. She has a way of knowing." After a moment he said, "Why, even Higgins wants it. He keeps saying to me, in an offhand sort of way, as if what he said meant nothing at all, 'Mrs. Pentland is a fine woman, sir. I've known her for years. Why, she's even helped me out of scrapes. But it's a pity she's shut up in that mausoleum with all those dead ones. She ought to have a husband who's a man. She's married to a living corpse.'"
Olivia flushed. "He has no right to talk that way. . . ."
"If you could hear him speak, you'd know that it's not disrespect, but because he worships you. He'd kiss the ground you walk over." And looking down, he added, "He says it's a pity that a thoroughbred like you is shut up at Pentlands. You mustn't mind his way of saying it. He's something of a horse-breeder and so he sees such things in the light of truth."
She knew, then, what O'Hara perhaps had failed to understand—that Higgins was touching the tragedy of her son, a son who should have been strong and full of life, like Jean. And a wild idea occurred to her—that she might still have a strong son, with O'Hara as the father, a son who would be a Pentland heir but without the Pentland taint. She might do what Savina Pentland had done. But she saw at once how absurd such an idea was; Anson would know well enough that it was not his son.
They rode on slowly and in silence while Olivia thought wearily round and round the dark, tangled maze in which she found herself. There seemed no way out of it. She was
