just after Letty Brown's marriage, and the poor old Major was very
glad to go away and pay a round of visits, and try to forget that his
last daughter had gone the way of all the rest. There was a
summer-house built in the corner of the garden, with a window in the
outer wall looking on to Grange Lane, from which everything that
happened could be inspected; and there was always somebody at that
window when the Perpetual Curate passed by. Then he began to have a
strange painful feeling that Lucy watched too, and was observing all
his looks and ways, and what he did and said in these changed times.
It was a strange difference from the sweet half-conscious bond between
them which existed of old, when they walked home together from
Wharfside, talking of the district and the people, in the tender union
of unspoken love and fellowship. Not that they were altogether parted
now; but Lucy contrived to leave the schoolroom most days before the
young priest could manage to disrobe himself, and was seldom to be
seen on the road lingering on her errands of kindness as she used to
do. But still she knew all he was about, and watched, standing in
doubt and wonder of him, which was at least a great deal better than
indifference. On the whole, however, it was a cloudy world through
which the Perpetual Curate passed as he went from his lodgings, where
the whistle of the new lodger had become a great nuisance to him, past
the long range of garden-walls, the sentinel window where Miss Dora
looked out watching for him, and Mr Wodehouse's green door which he no
longer entered every day. Over the young man's mind, as he went out to
his labours, there used to come that sensation of having nobody to
fall back upon, which is of all feelings the most desolate. Amid all
those people who were watching him, there was no one upon whom he
could rest, secure of understanding and sympathy. They were all
critical--examining, with more or less comprehension, what he did; and
he could not think of anybody in the world just then who would be
content with knowing that _he_ did it, and take that as warranty for
the act, unless, perhaps, his poor aunt Dora, whose opinion was not
important to the young man. It was not a pleasant state of mind into
which these feelings threw him; and the natural result was, that he
grew more and more careful about the rubric, and confined his sermons,
with increasing precision, to the beautiful arrangements of the
Church. They we