"No, let me go," she said. "I want to speak to her a minute first,
anyway."
And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to
see Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs,
in his room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside;
for bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently
informed her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this,
and with the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her
own experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by
words they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl
intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not
hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
girl who had affronted her.
Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe
had driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her
husband's mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a
mark of emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought
of it) "have a fit right there.
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