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.