"Are you displeased with me, Arthur?" she continued, her eyes filling
with tears as she saw the grave expression on his face. "Have I done
anything wrong? I am so sorry if I have."
Her voice had in it the grieved tones of a little child, and her eyes
were very bright, with the tears, quivering on her long silken lashes.
Leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, a
position he always assumed when puzzled and perplexed, the rector
looked at her a moment before he spoke. He could not define to himself
the nature of the interest he took in Lucy Harcourt. He admired her
greatly, and the self-denials and generous exertions she had made to
be of use to him since Anna went away had touched a tender chord and
made her seem very near to him.
Habit with him was everything, and the past two weeks' isolation had
shown him how necessary she had become to him. She did not satisfy his
higher wants as Anna Ruthven had done. No one could ever do that, but
she amused, and soothed, and rested him, and made his duties lighter
by taking half of them upon herself. That she was more attached to him
than he could wish, he greatly feared, for, since Captain Humphreys'
visit, he had seen matters differently from what he saw them before,
and had unsparingly questioned himself as to how far he would be
answerable for her future weal or woe.
"Guilty, verily, I am guilty, in leading her on, if I meant nothing by
it," he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it
just as Lucy came in, appealing so prettily to him to know why he had
neglected her so long. She was very beautiful this morning, and Arthur
felt his heart beat rapidly as he looked at her, and thought most any
man who had never known Anna Ruthven would be glad to gather that
bright creature in his own arms and know she was his own. One long,
long sigh to the memory of all he had hoped for once--one bitter pang
as he remembered Anna and that twilight hour in the church and then he
made a mad plunge in the dark and said: "Lucy, do you know people are beginning to talk about my seeing you so
much?"
"Well, let them talk. Who cares?" Lucy replied, with a good deal of
asperity of manner for her, for that very morning the old housekeeper
at Prospect Hill had ventured to remonstrate with her for "running
after the parson." "Pray, where is the wrong? What harm can come of
it?" and she tossed her head pettishly.
"None, perhaps," Arthur replied, "if one could keep his affections
under control. But if either of us should learn to love the other very
much, and the love was not reciprocated, harm would surely come of
that. At least, that was the view Captain Humphreys took of the matter
when he was speaking to me about it."