er only son, had sufficed to do it. She could not explain to him
that this departure from the established tramway had already broken
her own rest, and turned her peaceful happy life into a grievous
battle.

"I know that you are trying to go back," he said. "Do you think that
I have eyes and cannot see? Come, Lucy, you and I have been friends,
and we must not part in this way. My mother is a paragon among women.
I say it in earnest;--a paragon among women: and her love for me is
the perfection of motherly love."

"It is, it is; and I am so glad that you acknowledge it."

"I should be worse than a brute did I not do so; but, nevertheless, I
cannot allow her to lead me in all things. Were I to do so, I should
cease to be a man."

"Where can you find any one who will counsel you so truly?"

"But, nevertheless, I must rule myself. I do not know whether my
suspicions may be perfectly just, but I fancy that she has created
this estrangement between you and me. Has it not been so?"

"Certainly not by speaking to me," said Lucy, blushing ruby-red
through every vein of her deep-tinted face. But though she could not
command her blood, her voice was still under her control--her voice
and her manner.

"But has she not done so? You, I know, will tell me nothing but the
truth."

"I will tell you nothing on this matter, Lord Lufton, whether true or
false. It is a subject on which it does not concern me to speak."

"Ah! I understand," he said; and rising from his chair, he stood
against the chimney-piece with his back to the fire. "She cannot
leave me alone to choose for myself, my friends, and my own--;" but
he did not fill up the void.

"But why tell me this, Lord Lufton?"

"No! I am not to choose my own friends, though they be amongst the
best and purest of God's creatures. Lucy, I cannot think that you
have ceased to have a regard for me. That you had a regard for me,
I am sure." She felt that it was almost unmanly of him thus to seek
her out, and hunt her down, and then throw upon her the whole weight
of the explanation that his coming thither made necessary. But,
nevertheless, the truth must be told, and with God's help she would
find strength for the telling of it.

"Yes, Lord Lufton, I had a regard for you--and have. By that word you
mean something more than the customary feeling of acquaintance which
may ordinarily prevail between a gentleman and lady of different
families, who have known each other so short a t