"I go further than that. I think the hour and the man have arrived this day, and that it is all settled."
"Oh, Mary Lee, do you really?" Jack propped herself up to look at her sister. "Then why didn't she tell us?"
"For the same reason another young person of my acquaintance did not tell until it was forced from her," rejoined Mary Lee.
Jack sank back again. "Oh," she ejaculated in a discomfited way. "I am crazy to know, aren't you?" she asked presently.
"Of course I should like to know, but I can wait. Nan has such a telltale face and I never saw such a radiant expression as she has. Oh, dear me, Jack, I don't feel happy over it myself, for do you realize that it means we shall have to part with our dear old Nan, and that she may go goodness knows where to live? Neal Harding is hoping for diplomatic service for keeps, you know. He hopes for an appointment as consul somewhere, and that means that Nan may have to go away off from all her kinfolks."
"Mercy me, I hadn't thought of that. Oh, dear, I wish now I had kept up my little game, then perhaps this would never have come about."
"You mean child. I don't wish that, and after all it would not have done any good, probably, for if Neal Harding were in real earnest, he would not have allowed the thing to stop here. Eleanor would have seen to it that he knew of Nan's comings and goings, and then the evil day would simply have been put off. Meantime poor Nan would have been wretchedly unhappy." Jack agreed that this was all very true and that they must make the best of it. Later on they conferred with Eleanor who had nothing more to add to what they already suspected.
"I quite agree with you, Mary Lee," she said, "that it is all right, and I will tell you why. When Neal came in he came up and kissed me as if he had not seen me for a long time. I said, 'Why this unusual effusiveness, my dear?' 'Oh, just because I feel so jolly happy,' he said. I take that to mean something, whatever you may think."