Part 84 (2/2)
”How could I let _you_ be unhappy?!”
Neither spoke for a while. Each felt the other's heart beat; and David drank that ecstasy of silent, delirious bliss which comes to great hearts once in a life.
Had he not earned it?
CHAPTER XXIX.
By some mighty instinct Mrs. Wilson knew when to come in. She came to the door just one minute after Lucy had capitulated, and, turning the handle, but without opening the door, bawled some fresh directions to Jenny: this was to enable Lucy to smooth her ruffled feathers, if necessary, and look Agnes. But Lucy's actual contact with that honest heart seemed to have made a change in her; instead of doing Agnes, she confronted (after a fas.h.i.+on of her own) the situation she had so long evaded.
”Oh, nurse!” she cried, and wreathed her arms round her.
”Don't cry, my lamb! I can guess.”
”Cry? Oh no; I would not pay him so poor a compliment. It was to say, 'Dear nurse, you must love Mr. Dodd as well as me now.'”
The dame received this indirect intelligence with hearty delight.
”That won't cost me much trouble,” said she. ”He is the one I'd have picked out of all England for my nursling. When a young man is kind to an old woman, it is a good sign; but la! his face is enough for me: who ever saw guile in such a face as that. Aren't ye hungry by this time? Dinner will be ready in about a minute.”
”Nurse, can I speak to you a word?”
”Yes, sure.”
It was to inquire whether she would invite Miss Dodd.
”She loves her brother very dearly, and it is cruel to separate them.
Mr. Dodd will be nearly always here now, will he not?”
”You may take your davy of that.”
In a very few minutes a note was written, and Mrs. Wilson's eldest son, a handsome young farmer, started in the covered cart with his mother's orders ”to bring the young lady w.i.l.l.y-nilly.”
The holy allies both openly scouted Kenealy's advice, and both slyly stepped down into the town and acted on it. Mr. Fountain then returned to Font Abbey. Their two advertis.e.m.e.nts appeared side by side, and exasperated them.
After dinner Mrs. Wilson sent Lucy and David out to take a walk. At the gate they met with a little interruption; a carriage drove up; the coachman touched his hat, and Mrs. Bazalgette put her head out of the window.
”I came to take you back, love.”
David quaked.
”Thank you, aunt; but it is not worth while now.”
”Ah!” said Mrs. Bazalgette, casting a venomous look on David; ”I am too late, am I? Poor girl!”
Lucy soothed her aunt with the information that she was much happier now than she had been for a long time past. For this was a fencing-match.
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