to Jim—­and she landed him!  There’s no doubt about it, she had Jim, and if he’d lived you’d had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God’s truth about it!  Well—­when Jim was left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!  Jim wasn’t cold—­and she didn’t know whether Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left.  She had to get him.”

The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not, in Sibyl’s mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.

“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn’t to be allowed to go on.  It’s too mean!  I like poor Bibbs, and I don’t want to see him made such a fool of, and I don’t want to see the family made such a fool of!  I like poor Bibbs, but if he’d only stop to think a minute himself he’d have to realize he isn’t the kind of man any girl would be apt to fall in love with.  He’s better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he was—­just kind of a long white rag in good clothes.  And girls like men with some so to ’em—­some sort of dashingness, anyhow!  Nobody ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither’d she —­no, sir! not till she’d tried both Roscoe and Jim first!  It was only when her and her family got desperate that she—­”

Bibbs—­whiter than when he came from the sanitarium—­opened the door.  He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her.  Both women screamed.

“Oh, good heavens!” cried Sibyl.  “Were you in there?  Oh, I wouldn’t—­” She seized Mrs. Sheridan’s arm, pulling her toward the stairway.  “Come on, mother Sheridan!” she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations:  “Good gracious!  Oh, I wouldn’t—­too bad!  I didn’t dream he was there!  I wouldn’t hurt his feelings!  Not for the world!  Of course he had to know some time!  But, good heavens—­”

She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not following; he had gone back into his room.

“He—­he looked—­oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan.  “I—­I wish—­”

“Still, it’s a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl.  “I shouldn’t wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.  Come on!”

And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance to Roscoe and his father.  Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.

“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn out for the very best that he did hear—­just that way.  Don’t you think so, father Sheridan?”