But pride, or vanity if you prefer it, denied her here.

Sylvia was an inexperienced young girl, as she herself had so often found occasion to remind her cousin.

Moreover, she fostered the fond illusion that Sylvia looked to her for precept, that upon Sylvia's life she exercised a precious guiding influence.

How, then, should the supporting lean upon the supported?
Yet since she must, there and then, lean upon something or succumb instantly and completely, she chose a middle course, a sort of temporary assistance.
"I have been imagining things," she said.

"It may be a premonition, I don't know.