CHAPTER VIII
Ingeborg was dumb.
Her father's question was like a blow, shocking her back to consciousness. The warm dream that all was well, that she was understood, that there was love and kindliness for her at home after all and welcome and encouragement, the warm feeling of stretching herself in her family's kind lap, confident that it would hold her up and not spill her out on to the floor, was gone in a flash. She was hit awake, hit out of her brief delicious sleep. Her family had not got a lap, but it had an entirely unprepared mind, and into that unprepared mind she had tumbled the name of Dremmel.
"Judith—engaged?" she stammered faintly, on the Bishop's wheeling round, cup in hand, to examine into the cause of her prolonged silence.
"Your incredulity is not very flattering to your sister," he said; and Judith's eyelashes as she concentrated her gaze on the teapot were alone sufficiently lovely, the curved, dusky-golden soft things, to make incredulity simply silly.
Mrs. Bullivant avoided all speech and clung to her sofa.
"It's—so sudden," faltered Ingeborg.
"Much may happen in a week," said the Bishop.
"Yes," murmured Ingeborg, who knew that terribly, too.
"We never can tell what a day may bring forth," said the Bishop; and Ingeborg, deeply convinced, drooped her head acquiescent.