Lucy is going abroad to live, and I am going with her." As the words fell from her lips her eyes crept up to his face, watching the effect of her statement.

It was a cold, almost brutal way of putting it, she knew, but she dared not trust herself with anything less formal.
For a moment he sat perfectly still, the color gone from his cheeks, his eyes fixed on hers, a cold chill benumbing the roots of his hair.
The suddenness of the announcement seemed to have stunned him.
"For how long ?" he asked in a halting voice.
"I don't know.

Not less than two years; perhaps longer." "TWO YEARS?
Is Lucy ill ?" "No; she wants to study music, and she couldn't go alone." "Have you made up your mind to this ?" he asked, in a more positive tone.

His self-control was returning now.
"Yes." Doctor John rose from his chair, paced the room slowly for a moment, and crossing to the fireplace with his back to Jane, stood under her father's portrait, his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hand.
interwoven with the pain which the announcement had given him was the sharper sorrow of her neglect of him.

In forming her plans she had never once thought of her lifelong friend.
"Why did you not tell me something of this before ?" The inquiry was not addressed to Jane, but to the smouldering coals.