Sylvia had not been able once to look away from him since he began to speak. Her mouth was a little open in her white face, her eyes fixed with a painful intensity on his. He moistened his lips with his tongue. "Sylvia--_it's all right_--isn't it?" With no change of expression in her strained face, Sylvia nodded. As suddenly and apparently as automatically she took a backward step. The young man made a great stride towards her--there was a sound of quick strokes on the ice and--"BOO!" shouted the hilarious young man, bursting between them at railroad speed. He executed a marvelous pirouette and returned instantly, calling out, "Less spooning in the corners if you please--or if it's got to be, let me in!" He was followed closely by a string of young men and girls, playing snap-the-whip. They "snapped" just as they reached Jerry. The end girl flew off and bumped, screaming with joy, into Jerry's arms. He looked furiously over her head towards Sylvia, but she had been enveloped in a ring and was being conveyed away to the accompaniment of the usual squeals and shouts. The Colonel had come down to take them all back, she was informed, and was waiting for them with the sleigh. CHAPTER XIX AS A BIRD OUT OF A SNARE Sylvia dressed for dinner literally like one in a dream. Outwardly she was so calm that she thought she was so inwardly. It was nothing like so exciting as people said, to get engaged, she thought as she brushed out her hair and put it up in a big, gleaming knot. Here she had been engaged for a whole hour and a half, and was getting calmer every minute, instead of the reverse. She astonished herself by the lucidity of her brain, although it only worked by snatches--there being lacunae when she could not have told what she was doing. And yet, as she had approached the house, sitting again beside the Colonel, she had looked with a new thrill of interest at its imposing battlemented façade. The great hall had seemed familiar to her already as she stepped across it on her way to the stairs, her feet had pressed the rugs with assurance, she had been able to be quite nonchalant about refusing the services of the maid who offered to help her dress.