Part 30 (1/2)
”Where can you find any one who will counsel you so truly?”
”But, nevertheless, I must rule myself. I do not know whether my suspicions may be perfectly just, but I fancy that she has created this estrangement between you and me. Has it not been so?”
”Certainly not by speaking to me,” said Lucy, blus.h.i.+ng ruby-red through every vein of her deep-tinted face. But though she could not command her blood, her voice was still under her control--her voice and her manner.
”But has she not done so? You, I know, will tell me nothing but the truth.”
”I will tell you nothing on this matter, Lord Lufton, whether true or false. It is a subject on which it does not concern me to speak.”
”Ah! I understand,” he said; and rising from his chair, he stood against the chimney-piece with his back to the fire. ”She cannot leave me alone to choose for myself my own friends, and my own--;”
but he did not fill up the void.
”But why tell me this, Lord Lufton?”
”No! I am not to choose my own friends, though they be among the best and purest of G.o.d's creatures. Lucy, I cannot think that you have ceased to have a regard for me. That you had a regard for me, I am sure.”
She felt that it was almost unmanly of him thus to seek her out, and hunt her down, and then throw upon her the whole weight of the explanation that his coming thither made necessary. But, nevertheless, the truth must be told, and with G.o.d's help she would find strength for the telling of it.
”Yes, Lord Lufton, I had a regard for you--and have. By that word you mean something more than the customary feeling of acquaintance which may ordinarily prevail between a gentleman and lady of different families, who have known each other so short a time as we have done.”
”Yes, something much more,” said he, with energy.
”Well, I will not define the much--something closer than that.”
”Yes, and warmer, and dearer, and more worthy of two human creatures who value each other's minds and hearts.”
”Some such closer regard I have felt for you--very foolishly. Stop!
You have made me speak, and do not interrupt me now. Does not your conscience tell you that in doing so I have unwisely deserted those wise old grandmother's tramways of which you spoke just now?
It has been pleasant to me to do so. I have liked the feeling of independence with which I have thought that I might indulge in an open friends.h.i.+p with such as you are. And your rank, so different from my own, has doubtless made this more attractive.”
”Nonsense!”
”Ah! but it has. I know it now. But what will the world say of me as to such an alliance?”
”The world!”
”Yes, the world! I am not such a philosopher as to disregard it, though you may afford to do so. The world will say that I, the parson's sister, set my cap at the young lord, and that the young lord had made a fool of me.”
”The world shall say no such thing!” said Lord Lufton, very imperiously.
”Ah! but it will. You can no more stop it, than King Canute could the waters. Your mother has interfered wisely to spare me from this; and the only favour that I can ask you is, that you will spare me also.”
And then she got up as though she intended at once to walk forth to her visit to Mrs. Podgens' baby.
”Stop, Lucy!” he said, putting himself between her and the door.
”It must not be Lucy any longer, Lord Lufton; I was madly foolish when I first allowed it.”
”By heavens! but it shall be Lucy--Lucy before all the world. My Lucy, my own Lucy--my heart's best friend, and chosen love. Lucy, there is my hand. How long you may have had my heart, it matters not to say now.”