The surmise had formed itself irresistibly in Lucile’s mind that John himself was involved in this decision of Mary’s.  Had she done this thing—­involved herself in the beginnings of it, anyhow,—­as a desperate measure to bring her father and his wife together again?  By removing a temptation that Paula was still in danger of yielding to?  She didn’t put it to herself quite as crudely as that to be sure.

Certainly she had no intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought about it.  But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her niece’s sacrifice.  It must have been a sacrifice to something.  An answer to some fancied call of duty.  Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity.  But this was dangerous ground for Lucile.

The queerest thing about it all was the way it seemed—­magically—­to be producing such beneficent results.  John and Paula were reconciled by it,—­or at least as soon as it happened.  Paula had come down from Ravinia that very day, had had some sort of scene with her husband, and the two had been almost annoyingly at one upon every conceivable subject since.  Something had happened also during the week to Rush, which lightened the gloom that had been hanging on him so long,—­some utterly surprising interview with Graham Stannard’s father.  Pure coincidence one must suppose this to be, of course.  Mary’s engagement couldn’t have anything to do with it.  And then Mary herself!  The girl was a new person.  Absolutely radiant.  Orthodox conduct of course for a just engaged girl—­but in the circumstances one would think...

Lucile saw that Wallace hesitated a little about accepting her invitation to lunch and recalled the fact that he hadn’t dropped in on them once during the week though he had known that they were more or less back in town.

“Why, yes, I’ll come with pleasure,” he said.  “I don’t know precisely what sort of terms I’m on with John.  He felt for a few days, I know, that I’d been rather officious, but I may as well have it out with him now as later.  And I shall be glad of an opportunity to give Mary my best wishes.  I wrote her a note, of course, the day I read the announcement of the engagement in the newspapers.”  He added, “I certainly was in the dark as to that affair.”

“Aren’t you—­still more or less, in the dark about it?” Miss Wollaston inquired.  “I don’t mind owning that I am.  Mary’s sense of social values always seemed to me to be at least adequately developed.  On the surface one would have to call her rather worldly, I think.”

“On the surface perhaps,” Wallace interposed, “but not really; not at heart.  Still, I’ll grant it isn’t easy to understand.  There’s a certain attraction about the man of course.  And then there’s his music.”