"Oh, Rachel, you'll do it?"
"I must."
III
Rachel's engagement to Belhaven was announced by Astry, before twelve o'clock the following day, in the library.
Matrimonial engagements do not, as a rule, occur during week-end parties without some preliminary symptoms. The entire family might be taken by measles unawares much more easily than to be wholly surprised by an engagement. This absence of preliminary symptoms, in fact of any symptoms at all, had the effect of making Astry's announcement as violently abrupt as an explosion of nitroglycerine.
Paul Van Citters remarked afterwards, in private, that it had quite bowled him over, but Mrs. Van Citters, though a dutiful wife, made no response; she had impressions of her own, having just heard from her husband the report of that other engagement between Charter and Mrs. Prynne. Charter was Pamela Van Citters' first cousin and she did not relish the Prynne idea, though she withheld her reasons from Paul. Being a wise woman, Pamela had never criticized Mrs. Prynne, but she was really stunned by Rachel's engagement to Belhaven. So were the others.
Sidney Billop nearly swallowed his collar-button, which he had in his mouth when his mother burst into his room to inform him. She had been one of the group in the library; Sidney had not, having sat up uncommonly late the night before trying to discover why Astry kept Belhaven so long in tête-à-tête. The engagement offered a solution, but not a satisfactory one. It was scarcely necessary for Belhaven to ask Astry's consent to his sister-in-law's marriage, and everybody knew that the Leven money, what there was of it, was in charge of a trust company and tied up in real estate, so there could have been no question of a settlement. Sidney recovered the collar-button but not his peace of mind; it was all certainly very curious.
Colonel Sedley, with an elephantine effort at playfulness, congratulated Rachel with the remark that he had hoped, at one time, that she would join the army, but she met this shaft with composure and even smiled gently at the colonel's impossible pleasantry.
The subtle charm of her personality had never been more apparent and, although she was very pale, her face had the delicate loveliness of a Greuze. The low arch of the brow, framed by dusky hair, and the thick-set, dark lashes that shadowed her dark gray eyes, seemed perfect enough, in the subdued light of the library, to establish an actual claim to beauty almost as great as Eva Astry's. She had suddenly become the central figure of the drama and her friends were surprised and even impressed by the unexpected resources she showed, for no matter how awkward and incongruous it seemed, she remained the mistress of the situation. That the situation was incongruous could not be denied; it had the appearance, at first sight, of a nine days' wonder.
"Surprised?" Pamela Van Citters exclaimed, replying to Dr. Macclesfield. "Don't ask me; I've been figuratively snatching at things to keep on my feet. I'm like Paul; it's bowled me over."