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"Henry, Henry, how awestruck you look!" said a gay voice at the window. Lady Studley had come out, had come round to the library window, and, holding up her long, dark-blue velvet dress, was looking at us with a peculiar smile. "Well, my love," replied the baronet. He went to the window and flung it open. "Lucilla," he exclaimed, "you are mad to stand on the damp grass."
Not a word of sympathy, not a word of sorrow. That vindictive answer, and nothing more. We started for Sydenham. From time to time, I looked at Oscar sitting opposite to me, to see if any change appeared in him as we drew nearer and nearer to the place in which Lucilla was now living. No! Still the same ominous silence, the same unnatural self-repression possessed him.
But the captain shook his head in silent refusal, and Chester seemed to give it up, and with another furtive glance at Lucilla, which she did not see, her attention being fully occupied with the others, he too joined in the mirthful congratulations and good wishes.
"But the clouds pass away, and the star endures." "You are of a sanguine nature, my Lucilla." Lucilla sighed. "Why that sigh, dearest?" "Because I am thinking how little even those who love us most know of us! I never tell my disquiet and sorrow. There are times when thou wouldst not think me too warmly addicted to hope!" "And what, poor idler, have you to fear?"
So new to the world, its ways, its fashions, so strange and infantine in all things, as Lucilla was, he trembled to expose her inexperience to the dangers that would beset it. He knew that his "friends" would pay very little respect to her reserve; and that for one so lovely and unhackneyed, the snares of the wildest and most subtle adepts of intrigue would be set.
Wappinger, Miss Lucilla, Mrs. Eveleth, in turn only to find himself settled down at last with a strange young woman in widow's weeds, in a dim corner of the drawing-room. The meeting was the more abrupt owing to the circumstance that Diane, unaware of his arrival, had just emerged from the adjoining ball-room, which was decorated for a dance. Mrs.
He turned to Lucilla, and popped his thumb on her eyelids for the last time at parting. "My sweet-Feench, remember what your surgeon-optic has said to you. I shall let the light in here but in my own way, at my own time. Pretty lofe! Ah, how infinitely much prettier she will be, when she can see!"
"I cannot affect to be surprised at your decision," he said. "However sincerely I may regret it, I admit that it is the natural decision, in your case." Lucilla addressed herself next to Herr Grosse. "Choose your own day," she said. "The sooner, the better. To-morrow, if you can."
They proved to be Maud, Sydney, and Frank Dinsmore, from the Oaks; and, when greetings had been exchanged, they said their errand was to speak of the boating party, and ask if Grace could go; also if Lucilla had received Chester's invitation and meant to accept it. Chester would have come himself but had an unavoidable business engagement for the evening.
But this very feeling gave an embarrassment to his situation with Lucilla, and yet more fixedly combined her image with that of a wearisome seclusion and an eternal ennui. From the thought of Lucilla, coupled with its many embarrassments, Godolphin turned with avidity to the easy enjoyments of life enjoyments that ask no care and dispense with the trouble of reflection.
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