what your son may have told you, Lady Lufton. For
myself, I do not care to have any secrets from you in this matter;
and as he has spoken to you about it, I suppose that such is his
wish also. Am I right in presuming that he has spoken to you on the
subject?"

"Yes, he has; and it is for that reason that I have taken the liberty
of sending for you."

"And may I ask what he has told you? I mean, of course, as regards
myself," said Lucy. Lady Lufton, before she answered this question,
began to reflect that the young lady was taking too much of the
initiative in this conversation, and was, in fact, playing the game
in her own fashion, which was not at all in accordance with those
motives which had induced Lady Lufton to send for her. "He has told
me that he made you an offer of marriage," replied Lady Lufton: "a
matter which, of course, is very serious to me, as his mother; and
I have thought, therefore, that I had better see you, and appeal to
your own good sense and judgement and high feeling. Of course you are
aware--"

Now was coming the lecture to be illustrated by King Cophetua and
Griselda, as Lucy had suggested to Mrs. Robarts; but she succeeded
in stopping it for awhile. "And did Lord Lufton tell you what was my
answer?"

"Not in words. But you yourself now say that you refused him; and I
must express my admiration for your good--"

"Wait half a moment, Lady Lufton. Your son did make me an offer. He
made it to me in person, up at the parsonage, and I then refused
him;--foolishly, as I now believe, for I dearly love him. But I did
so from a mixture of feelings which I need not, perhaps, explain;
that most prominent, no doubt, was a fear of your displeasure. And
then he came again, not to me, but to my brother, and urged his suit
to him. Nothing can have been kinder to me, more noble, more loving,
more generous, than his conduct. At first I thought, when he was
speaking to myself, that he was led on thoughtlessly to say all that
he did say. I did not trust his love, though I saw that he did trust
it himself. But I could not but trust it when he came again--to my
brother, and made his proposal to him. I don't know whether you will
understand me, Lady Lufton; but a girl placed as I am feels ten times
more assurance in such a tender of affection as that, than in one
made to herself, at the spur of the moment, perhaps. And then you
must remember that I--I myself--I loved him from the first. I was
foolish enough