Miss Marjoribanks

had taken such pains to make her comfortable. At this moment, indeed, Lucilla was slightly given to moralising, though with her usual wisdom she kept her meditations to herself. She was thinking with a momentary vexation of all the plants that had been put into the beds, and of so much time and trouble lost⁠—when Mr. Cavendish came up to her. It was a cold evening, and there was nothing in common between this walk and the walk they had taken together from Grove Street to Grange Lane on an earlier occasion. But this time, so far from being reluctant to accompany her, Mr. Cavendish came to her side eagerly. The maid retired a little behind, and then the two found themselves in that most perfect of all positions for mutual confidence⁠—a street not too crowded and noisy, all shrouded in the darkness, and yet twinkling with the friendly lights of an autumn evening. Nothing could have been more perfect than their isolation from the surrounding world, if they thought proper to isolate themselves; and yet it was always there to be taken refuge in if the confidence should receive a check, or the mind of the chance companions change.

“I have been trying to catch a glimpse of you for a long time,” said Mr. Cavendish, after they had talked a little in the ordinary way, as everybody was doing in Grange Lane, about the two people henceforward to be known in Carlingford as “the Beverleys.” “But you are always so busy serving everybody. And I have a great deal to say to you that I don’t know how to say.”

“Then don’t say it, please,” said Lucilla. “It is a great deal better not. It might be funny, you know; but I am not disposed to be funny tonight. I am very glad about Mrs. Mortimer, to be sure, that she is to be settled so nicely, and that they are going to be married at last. But, after all, when one thinks of it, it is a little vexatious. Just when her house was all put to rights, and the garden looking so pretty, and the school promising so well,” said Lucilla; and there was a certain aggrieved tone in her voice.

“And it is you who have done everything for her, as for all the rest of us,” said Mr. Cavendish, though he could not help laughing a little; and then he paused, and his voice softened in the darkness by Lucilla’s side. “Do not let us talk of Mrs. Mortimer,” he said. “I sometimes have something just on my lips to say, and I do not know whether I dare say it. Miss Marjoribanks⁠—”

And here he came to a pause. He was fluttered and frightened, which was what she, and not he, ought to have been. And at the bottom of his heart he did not wish to say it, which gave far more force to his hesitation than simply a doubt whether he might dare. Perhaps Lucilla’s heart fluttered too, with a sense that the moment which once would not have been an unwelcome moment, had at last arrived. Her heart, it is true, was not very particularly engaged; but still she was sensible of all Mr. Cavendish’s capacities, and was “very fond” of him, as she said; and her exertions on his behalf had produced their natural effect, and moved her affections a little. She made an involuntary pause for the hundredth part of a minute, and reckoned it all up again, and asked herself whether it were possible. There was something, in the first place, becoming and suitable in the idea that she, who was the only person who knew his secret, should take him and it together and make the best of them. And Lucilla had the consciousness that she could indeed make a great deal of Mr. Cavendish. Nobody had ever crossed her path of whom so much could be made; and as for any further danger of his real origin and position being found out and exposed to the world, Miss Marjoribanks was capable of smiling at that when the defence would be in her own hands. She might yet accept him, and have him elected member for Carlingford, and carry him triumphantly through all his difficulties. For a small part⁠—nay, even for the half of a minute⁠—Lucilla paused, and made a rapid review of the circumstances, and reconsidered her decision. Perhaps if Mr. Cavendish had been really in earnest, that which was only a vague possibility might have become, in another minute, a fact and real. It was about the first time that her heart had found anything to say in the matter; and the fact was that it actually fluttered in her reasonable bosom, and experienced a certain malaise which was quite new to her. Was it possible that she could be in love with Mr. Cavendish? or was it merely the excitement of a final decision which made that unusual commotion far away down at the bottom of Lucilla’s heart?

However that might be, Miss Marjoribanks triumphed over her momentary weakness. She saw the possibility, and at the same moment she saw that it could not be; and while Mr. Cavendish hesitated, she, who was always prompt and ready, made up her mind.

“I don’t know what I have done in particular, either for her or the rest of you,” she said, ignoring the other part of her companion’s faltering address, “except to help to amuse you; but I am going to do something very serious, and I hope you will show you are grateful, as you say⁠—though I don’t know what you have to be grateful about⁠—by paying great attention to me. Mr. Cavendish, I am going to give you good advice,” said Lucilla; and, notwithstanding her courage, she too faltered a little, and felt that it was rather a serious piece of business that she had taken in hand.

“Advice?” Mr. Cavendish said, like an echo of her voice; but