Jane gave but one answer to all inquiries—­and there were many.

“Yes, I know the move is a sudden one,” she would say, “but it is for Lucy’s good, and there is no one to go with her but me.”  No one saw beneath the mask that hid her breaking heart.  To them the drawn face and the weary look in her eyes only showed her grief at leaving home and those who loved her:  to Mrs. Cavendish it seemed part of Jane’s peculiar temperament.

Nor could they watch her in the silence of the night tossing on her bed, or closeted with Martha in her search for the initial steps that had led to this horror.  Had the Philadelphia school undermined her own sisterly teachings or had her companions been at fault?  Perhaps it was due to the blood of some long-forgotten ancestor, which in the cycle of years had cropped out in this generation, poisoning the fountain of her youth.  Bart, she realized, had played the villain and the ingrate, but yet it was also true that Bart, and all his class, would have been powerless before a woman of a different temperament.  Who, then, had undermined this citadel and given it over to plunder and disgrace?  Then with merciless exactness she searched her own heart.  Had it been her fault?  What safeguard had she herself neglected?  Wherein had she been false to her trust and her promise to her dying father?  What could she have done to avert it?  These ever-haunting, ever-recurring doubts maddened her.

One thing she was determined upon, cost what it might—­to protect her sister’s name.  No daughter of Morton Cobden’s should be pointed at in scorn.  For generations no stain of dishonor had tarnished the family name.  This must be preserved, no matter who suffered.  In this she was sustained by Martha, her only confidante.

Doctor John heard the news from Jane’s lips before it was known to the villagers.  He had come to inquire after Martha.

She met him at the porch entrance, and led him into the drawing-room, without a word of welcome.  Then shutting the door, she motioned him to a seat opposite her own on the sofa.  The calm, determined way with which this was done—­so unusual in one so cordial—­startled him.  He felt that something of momentous interest, and, judging from Jane’s face, of serious import, had happened.  He invariably took his cue from her face, and his own spirits always rose or fell as the light in her eyes flashed or dimmed.

“Is there anything the matter?” he asked nervously.  “Martha worse?”

“No, not that; Martha is around again—­it is about Lucy and me.”  The voice did not sound like Jane’s.

The doctor looked at her intently, but he did not speak.  Jane continued, her face now deathly pale, her words coming slowly.

“You advised me some time ago about Lucy’s going to Trenton, and I am glad I followed it.  You thought it would strengthen her love for us all and teach her to love me the better.  It has—­so much so that hereafter we will never be separated.  I hope now you will also approve of what I have just decided upon.  Lucy is going abroad to live, and I am going with her.”