e to do, during the course of which the elder
sister exhibited with a certain shy pride that little photograph of
the new rectory, in which there was one window embowered in foliage,
which the bride had already concluded was to be Lucy's room. Lucy
yielded during this sisterly conference to sympathetic thoughts even
of Mr Proctor. The two women were alone in the world. They were still
so near the grave and the deathbed that chance words spoken without
thought from time to time awakened in both the ready tears. Now and
then they each paused to consider with a sob what _he_ would have
liked best. They knew very little of what was going on outside at the
moment when they were occupied with those simple calculations. What
was to become of them, as people say--what money they were to have, or
means of living--neither was much occupied in thinking of. They had
each other; they had, besides, one a novel and timid middle-aged
confidence, the other an illimitable youthful faith in one man in the
world. Even Lucy, whose mind and thoughts were more individual than
her sister's, wanted little else at that moment to make her happy with
a tender tremulous consolation in the midst of her grief.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

While matters were thus arranging themselves in the ideas at least of
the two sisters whose prospects had been so suddenly changed,
explanations of a very varied kind were going on in the house of the
Miss Wentworths. It was a very full house by this time, having been
invaded and taken possession of by the "family" in a way which entirely
obliterated the calmer interests and occupations of the habitual
inhabitants. The three ladies had reached the stage of life which knows
no personal events except those of illness and death; and the presence
of Jack Wentworth, of Frank and Gerald, and even of Louisa, reduced them
altogether to the rank of spectators, the audience, or at the utmost the
chorus, of the drama; though this was scarcely the case with Miss Dora,
who kept her own room, where she lay on the sofa, and received visits,
and told the story of her extraordinary adventure, the only adventure of
her life. The interest of the household centred chiefly, however, in the
dining-room, which, as being the least habitable apartment in the house,
was considered to be most adapted for anything in the shape of business.
On the way from the church to Miss Wentworth's house the Curate had
given his father a brief account of al