“Yvonne says no.”
“Well, I declare!” grandma exclaimed, in amazement. It was not the first time she had declared since she was in France, but never with such energy. In her voice there were astonishment and anger and admiration and, most of all, curiosity.
“How did it happen, Ethel? Tell me all!” and she turned her face toward her granddaughter with an expression of anxiety.
“Ah!” Ethel replied, “who would ever suspect that Yvonne had a romance in her life?”
“A romance in Yvonne’s life! What are you telling me, Ethel? Watched as she is, a romance! It must have been with another doll!—when she was ten years old—or when she was playing husband and wife with some child of her own age!”
“Exactly so,” Ethel answered, with a serious look. “Listen! Yesterday I went in the auto to the Grojeans’, to say good day as I passed. I suspected nothing. Everything was shut up, as usual. I knocked and was let in. The door of the salon opened, and Yvonne, who had recognized my voice, came toward me with outstretched hands, and said: ‘Oh, it’s you! How glad I am! Come in!’”
Grandma was immensely interested, and listened, with her eyes fixed on those of Ethel, with a scarcely perceptible movement of her lips, as if, in her anxiety to lose nothing, she were repeating the words to herself.
“By the way in which Yvonne took my hand,” Ethel went on, in a low voice, “I understood something was happening. The Grojean ladies were there, silent and much embarrassed, and there was Mme. Riçois, as red as possible. I looked at Yvonne. ‘My dear friend,’ Yvonne said to me, ‘I am glad you came. Perhaps you know what is going on. For me it’s my first news of it. They have just told me of a great scheme,—an offer so honorable and so flattering—’ That moment, grandma, I understood they had just communicated to Yvonne Will’s intentions. By the way in which the ladies listened to Yvonne, I also learned that she had not yet given her answer. She was going to speak in my presence.
“‘The offer is so flattering,’ Yvonne said, looking me squarely in the face, ‘and I should have been so very happy to call you my sister; the marriage would overwhelm every one here with joy’ (I had only to look at the beaming faces to see that they expected Yvonne to say ‘I accept’)—‘the marriage would overwhelm us all with joy; but there is some one—one only—who would have too great pain from it. I am not free—I have given my word to another!’
“I wish you had been there, grandma, to judge of the consternation caused by the word ‘another’! Mme. de Grojean arose, pale as death.