o talk with
somebody who was still capable of regarding things right side to.

She was much too penetrating a person not to have been perfectly aware
from the first that, astonishing as were the facts John had communicated
to her, upon her arrival from Hickory Hill a week ago, other facts of
major importance were being suppressed.

She had found her brother apparently occupied in the normal Sunday
morning manner with his newspaper, and he had answered her rather
breathless inquiries about Mary by saying that she was all right. She was
finishing off her night's sleep but would, he supposed, be down by and
by. There was nothing the matter. Rush had been unnecessarily alarmed,
lacking the fact which explained the case. And then he sprang his mine,
informing her that Mary was engaged to marry Anthony March.

When, after a speechless interval, she had asked him, feebly, whether he
didn't mean Graham Stannard, he had been very short with her indeed. The
engagement to March was an accomplished fact, and the sooner we took it
for granted the better. He showed a great reluctance to go further into
detail about the matter and he flinched impatiently from the innocent
question;--when had he himself been informed of this astounding state of
things. Well, naturally, since in the train of his answer the fact had
been elicited that he hadn't come to town until this morning and that
Mary had spent another night alone. And it was not Mary but March who
had, already this morning, told him about it.

Beyond that John couldn't be driven to go. He concluded by putting a
categorical injunction upon her. She wasn't to expostulate with Mary nor
to attempt to examine either into her reasons for this step nor into her
state of mind in making it. He was satisfied that the girl knew what she
was doing and that it represented her real wishes. His sister's
satisfaction on these points would have to be vicarious.

The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile's mind that John
himself was involved in this decision of Mary's. Had she done this
thing--involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,--as a desperate
measure to bring her father and his wife together again? By removing a
temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to? She didn't put
it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure.

Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought
about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her