With the single word a light ripple escaped from her lips.
Jane straightened herself in her chair. A sudden faintness passed over her—as if she had received a blow in the chest, stopping her breath.
"You mean—you mean—that you have promised to marry Max Feilding!" she gasped.
"That's exactly what I do mean."
The butterfly smile about Lucy's mouth had vanished. That straightening of the lips and slow contraction of the brow which Jane knew so well was taking its place. Then she added nervously, unclasping her hands and picking up her gloves:
"Aren't you pleased?"
"I don't know," answered Jane, gazing about the room with a dazed look, as if seeking for a succor she could not find. "I must think. And so you have promised to marry Max!" she repeated, as if to herself. "And in December." For a brief moment she paused, her eyes again downcast; then she raised her voice quickly and in a more positive tone asked, "And what do you mean to do with Ellen?"
"That's what I want to talk to you about, you dear thing." Lucy had come prepared to ignore any unfavorable criticisms Jane might make and to give her only sisterly affection in return. "I want to give her to you for a few months more," she added blandly, "and then we will take her abroad with us and send her to school either in Paris or Geneva, where her grandmother can be near her. In a year or two she will come to us in Paris."
Jane made no answer.
Lucy moved uncomfortably in her chair. She had never, in all her life, seen her sister in any such mood. She was not so much astonished over her lack of enthusiasm regarding the engagement; that she had expected—at least for the first few days, until she could win her over to her own view. It was the deadly poise—the icy reserve that disturbed her. This was new.