"Sylvia, it is good to see you," she murmured. "Take off your wraps. We are going to have dinner up here if you don't mind. Francis is dining out. We can have a cozy gossip all to ourselves."
As the dainty little dinner was being served the two talked about everything in general and nothing in particular, taking pains to avoid anything that could possibly interest either. It was only after the meal was cleared away and the maid banished that they came to the really important things.
"Sylvia, I know you think I am going to be disagreeable about Jack. I'm not. I'm glad. No, don't speak yet. I want to tell you why I am glad. I knew you didn't care for Jack, at least not enough. You sort of half way cared just as I did for Francis. You thought it would be suitable and agreeable and easy and please everybody all round especially Jack. And you thought that the rest would come in time, didn't you?"
Sylvia nodded in shamed silence.
"On the whole, your reasons for getting engaged were quite as creditable as mine for getting engaged to Francis, certainly more so than Isabel's for getting engaged to her miserable count. But, even so, they weren't good enough. There is only one reason for getting engaged to a man, anyway, only one for marrying him, and that is just plain old-fashioned love. I found that out in a very expensive course of lessons. You didn't love Jack. I knew it that night. I had just sent Charlton away and I knew the real thing--what it was. I care more for Jack than almost anybody in the world and I didn't want him to be unhappy any more than you did, but he is going to be more unhappy now than if you had said no last December."
Sylvia winced at that.
"I know it, Jeanette. I am as sorry about that as you can possibly be."
"I know. I didn't mean to reproach you. I just wanted to tell you I know it was better this way, hard as it is for Jack. He'll get over it now. At least, I hope he will, but if you had married him he wouldn't have gotten over it. He would have been like Francis. Francis knows I don't care. At least he knows I didn't use to care. It has hurt him pretty badly sometimes, I'm afraid. Maybe now he'll understand. I'm not so bad as I might have been. I--Sylvia, do you know why I sent Charlton away?"
Sylvia shook her head.
"I had just found out--something--about myself. I am not much good but I couldn't go on with that kind of thing when I knew-- Sylvia, please understand. It is harder to say than I thought."