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 down-stairs 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