niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer
to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity.
But this was dangerous ground for Lucile.

The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed--magically--to be
producing such beneficent results. John and Paula were reconciled by
it,--or at least as soon as it happened. Paula had come down from Ravinia
that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two
had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since.
Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the
gloom that had been hanging on him so long,--some utterly surprising
interview with Graham Stannard's father. Pure coincidence one must
suppose this to be, of course. Mary's engagement couldn't have anything
to do with it. And then Mary herself! The girl was a new person.
Absolutely radiant. Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged
girl--but in the circumstances one would think...

Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her
invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn't dropped in on
them once during the week though he had known that they were more or
less back in town.

"Why, yes, I'll come with pleasure," he said. "I don't know precisely
what sort of terms I'm on with John. He felt for a few days, I know, that
I'd been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as
later. And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes.
I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the
engagement in the newspapers." He added, "I certainly was in the dark as
to that affair."

"Aren't you--still more or less, in the dark about it?" Miss Wollaston
inquired. "I don't mind owning that I am. Mary's sense of social values
always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed. On the surface
one would have to call her rather worldly, I think."

"On the surface perhaps," Wallace interposed, "but not really; not at
heart. Still, I'll grant it isn't easy to understand. There's a certain
attraction about the man of course. And then there's his music."

"And Mary," Miss Wollaston observed, "happens to be the one utterly
unmusical person in the family. She's completely absorbed in the
preparation for his opera however." Then after a little pause, "She may
prove rather more explanatory with you than she has been with me. She
seems to take a