“And where will it be?” “That’s something I meant to speak of. It can’t be here.” She hesitated. “I must tell you the truth. There would be too much to remind me. I couldn’t endure it. This may seem sentimental to you, but I’m quite determined. But I’ll have a hard time persuading my people—for you see, they’re proud, and they’ll say the world would expect you to marry me here. You must stand by me in this.” “Very well,” he said. “I will urge them to have the wedding in New York.” There was a pause, then Sylvia added: “Another thing, you must not breathe a word to anyone of what I’ve told you—about the state of my feelings—my reasons for deciding—” He smiled. “I’d hardly boast about that!” “No, but I mean you mustn’t tell your dearest friend—not Aunt Nannie, not Mrs. Winthrop. You see, I have to make my people believe that I’m quite sure of my own mind. If my father had any idea that I was thinking of him, then he’d surely forbid it. If he ever found out afterwards, he’d be wretched—and I’d have failed in what I tried to do.” “I understand,” said van Tuiver, humbly. “It’s not going to be easy for me,” she added. “I shall have to make everybody think I’m happy. You must sympathize with me and help me—and not mind if I seem unreasonable and full of whims.” He said again that he understood, and would do his best. He took her hand, very gently, and held it in his; he started to kiss it, but when he saw that she had no pleasure in the ceremony he released it, parting from her with a formal little speech of thanks. And such was the manner of Sylvia’s second betrothal. § 20 The engagement was announced at once, the wedding to take place six weeks later in New York. Just as Sylvia had anticipated, the family made a great to-do over the place of the ceremony; but finding that both she and van Tuiver were immovable, they cast about for some pretext to make a New York wedding seem plausible to a suspicious world. They bethought themselves of an almost forgotten relative of the family, a step-sister of Lady Dee’s, who had lived in haughty poverty for half a century in the metropolis, and was now discovered in a boarding-house in Harlem, and transported to a suite of apartments in the Palace Hotel, to become responsible for Sylvia’s desertion of Castleman County. She had nothing to do but be the hostess of her “dear niece”—since Mrs. Harold Cliveden had kindly offered to see to the practical details of the ceremonial.