Miss Hanbury owed her attractiveness to her essentially English type, not of beauty—she would have disdained to lay claim to that—but of fresh, healthy coloring, a suspicion of tomboyishness, and a lithe, supple figure that stood her in good stead in the hunting and hockey fields. A trifle slangy on occasion, she was a good hater and a staunch friend, with a temper—as she had warned Alec already—that would need a lot of humoring if they were not to have “ructions.”
“I’ve got the makings of a termagant, my dear boy, but it will be all right if you rule me with a velvet glove,” she had remarked within five minutes of their first kiss.
In fact, Miss Sybil Hanbury was a bit of a hoyden; but a very capable little hoyden for all that, and absolutely fearless.
The two girls had naturally paired off together, and the subject of their talk was, equally naturally, the new Duke—Alec’s friend, Sybil’s cousin, and Leonie’s chance acquaintance on the St. Paul.
Sybil, after listening to Leonie’s rather halting description of the fellow passenger whom she had known as “Mr. Hanbury,” owned
[62]
