Mrs. Hilyard, however, continued speaking without waiting to be
questioned.
"Eliot Coventry has had just the sort of experience to make him cynical,"
she went on in her pretty, dragging voice. "Particularly as regards women.
His mother was a perfectly beautiful woman, with the temper of a fiend. She
lived simply and solely for her own enjoyment, and never cared tuppence
about either Eliot or his sister."
"Oh, has he a sister?" The question sprang from Ann's lips without her own
volition.
"Yes. She was a very pretty girl, too, I remember."
Ann's thoughts flew back to the day of the Fete des Narcisses, recalling
the pretty woman whom she had observed driving with Eliot in the prize car.
Probably, since he so disliked women in general, his companion on that
occasion had been merely his sister! She felt oddly pleased and contented
at this solution of a matter which had nagged her curiosity more than a
little at the time.
"Mrs. Coventry--the mother--was utterly selfish, and insisted upon her
own way in everything." Cara was pursuing her recollections in a quiet,
retrospective fashion which gave Ann the impression that they had no very
deep or poignant interest for her.
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