being aggravated when they realized that with
Lucy away there would be no one to lead in their merrymakings.

Martha held her peace; she would stay at home, she told Mrs.
Dellenbaugh, and wait for their return and look after the place. Her
heart was broken with the loneliness that would come, she moaned, but
what was best for her bairn she was willing to bear. It didn't make
much difference either way; she wasn't long for this world.

The doctor's mother heard the news with ill-concealed satisfaction.

"A most extraordinary thing has occurred here, my dear," she said to
one of her Philadelphia friends who was visiting her--she was too
politic to talk openly to the neighbors. "You have, of course, met that
Miss Cobden who lives at Yardley--not the pretty one--the plain one.
Well, she is the most quixotic creature in the world. Only a few weeks
ago she wanted to become a nurse in the public hospital here, and now
she proposes to close her house and go abroad for nobody knows how
long, simply because her younger sister wants to study music, as if a
school-girl couldn't get all the instruction of that kind here that is
necessary. Really, I never heard of such a thing."

To Mrs. Benson, a neighbor, she said, behind her hand and in strict
confidence: "Miss Cobden is morbidly conscientious over trifles. A fine
woman, one of the very finest we have, but a little too strait-laced,
and, if I must say it, somewhat commonplace, especially for a woman of
her birth and education."

To herself she said: "Never while I live shall Jane Cobden marry my
John! She can never help any man's career. She has neither the worldly
knowledge, nor the personal presence, nor the money."

Jane gave but one answer to all inquiries--and there were many.

"Yes, I know the move is a sudden one," she would say, "but it is for
Lucy's good, and there is no one to go with her but me." No one saw
beneath the mask that hid her breaking heart. To them the drawn face
and the weary look in her eyes only showed her grief at leaving home
and those who loved her: to Mrs. Cavendish it seemed part of Jane's
peculiar temperament.

Nor could they watch her in the silence of the night tossing on her
bed, or closeted with Martha in her search for the initial steps that
had led to this horror. Had the Philadelphia school undermined her own
sisterly teachings or had her companions been at fault? Perhaps it was
due to the blood of some long-forgotten ancestor, which