“I heard you were here,” said Lucy, “and I thought you might think it strange not to see us both.” And then she paused, perhaps finding it less easy than she thought to explain why she had come. “We ought to thank you, Mr. Wentworth, for your kindness, though I—”
“You were angry with me,” said the Curate. “I know you thought me heartless; but a man must bear to be misconceived when he has duty to do,” the young clergyman added, with a swelling heart. Lucy did not know the fuller significance of his words; and there was a loftiness in them which partly affronted her, and set all her sensitive woman-pride in arms against him.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, faltering, and then the two stood beside each other in silence, with a sense of estrangement. As for Lucy, all the story about Rosa Elsworthy, of which she had not yet heard the last chapter, rushed back upon her mind. Was it to see little Rosa’s lover that she had come out of the darkness of her room, with a natural longing for sympathy which it was impossible to restrain? The tenderness of the instinctive feeling which had moved her, went back upon her heart in bitterness. That he must have divined why she had come, and scorned her for it, was the mildest supposition in Lucy’s mind. She could almost have imagined that he had come on purpose to elicit this vain exhibition of regard, and triumph over it; all this, too, when she was in such great trouble and sorrow, and wanted a little compassion, a little kindness, so much. This was the state of mind to which Lucy had come, in five minutes after she entered the room, when Miss Wodehouse came back with the letter. The elder sister was almost as much astonished at Lucy’s presence as if she had been the dead inhabitant who kept such state in the darkened house. She was so startled that she went back a step or two when she perceived her, and hastily put the letter in her pocket, and exclaimed her sister’s name in a tone most unlike Miss Wodehouse’s natural voice.
“I came downstairs because—I mean they told me Mr. Wentworth was here,” said Lucy, who had never felt so weak and so miserable in her life, “and I wanted to thank him for all his kindness.” It was here for the first time that Lucy broke down. Her sorrow was so great, her longing for a word of kindness had been so natural, and her shame and self-condemnation at the very thought that she was able to think of anything but her father, were so bitter, that the poor girl’s forces, weakened by watching, were not able to withstand them. She sank into the chair that stood nearest, and covered her face with her hands, and cried as people cry only at twenty. And as for Mr. Wentworth, he had no right to take her in his arms and comfort her, nor to throw himself at her feet and entreat her to take courage. All he could do was to stand half a yard, yet a whole world, apart looking at her, his heart beating with all the remorseful half-angry tenderness of love. Since it was not his to console her, he was almost impatient of her tears.
“Dear, I have been telling Mr. Wentworth about tomorrow,” said Miss Wodehouse, weeping too, as was natural, “and he thinks—he thinks—oh, my darling! and so do I—that it will be too much for you. When I was young it never was the custom; and oh, Lucy, remember that ladies are not to be expected to have such command over their feelings,” said poor Miss Wodehouse, dropping on her knees by Lucy’s chair. Mr. Wentworth stood looking on in a kind of despair. He had nothing to say, and no right to say anything; even his presence was a kind of intrusion. But to be referred to thus as an authority against Lucy’s wishes, vexed him in the most unreasonable way.
“Mr. Wentworth does not know me,” said Lucy, under her breath, wiping away her tears with a trembling, indignant hand. “If we had had a brother, it might have been different; but there must be somebody there that loves him,” said the poor girl, with a sob, getting up hastily from her chair. She could not bear to stay any longer in the room, which she had entered with a vague sense of possible consolation. As for the Curate, he made haste to open the door for her, feeling the restraint of his position almost intolerable. “I shall be there,” he said, stopping at the door to look into the fair, pallid face which Lucy would scarcely raise to listen. “Could you not trust me?” It looked like giving him a pledge of something sacred and precious to put her hand into his, which was held out for it so eagerly. But Lucy could not resist the softening of nature; and not even Miss Wodehouse, looking anxiously after them, heard what further words they were that Mr. Wentworth said in her ear. “I am for your service, however and wherever you want me,” said the Curate, with a young man’s absolutism. Heaven knows he had enough to do with his own troubles; but he remembered no obstacle which could prevent him from dedicating
