w happened to be in Mr
Wentworth's way.

"I am but a man," said the young lover. "I would rather have the roses
of life--but, Lucy, I am only a perpetual curate," he continued, with
her hand in his. Her answer was made in the most heartless and
indifferent words. She let two big drops--which fell like hail, though
they were warmer than any summer rain--drop out of her eyes, and she
said, with lips that had some difficulty in enunciating that heartless
sentiment, "I don't see what it matters to me--"

Which was true enough, though it did not sound encouraging; and it
is dreadful to confess that, for a little while after, neither
Skelmersdale, nor Wentworth, nor Mr Proctor's new rectory, nor the
no-income of the Perpetual Curate of St Roque's, had the smallest place
in the thoughts of either of these perfectly inconsiderate young people.
For half an hour they were an Emperor and Empress seated upon two
thrones, to which all the world was subject; and when at the end of that
time they began to remember the world, it was but to laugh at it in
their infinite youthful superiority. Then it became apparent that to
remain in Carlingford, to work at "the district," to carry out all the
ancient intentions of well-doing which had been the first bond between
them, was, after all, the life of lives;--which was the state of mind
they had both arrived at when Miss Wodehouse, who thought they had been
too long together under the circumstances, and could not help wondering
what Mr Wentworth could be saying, came into the room, rather flurried
in her own person. She thought Lucy must have been telling the Curate
about Mr Proctor and his hopes, and was, to tell the truth, a little
curious how Mr Wentworth would take it, and a little--the very
least--ashamed of encountering his critical looks. The condition of mind
into which Miss Wodehouse was thrown when she perceived the real state
of affairs would be difficult to describe. She was very glad and very
sorry, and utterly puzzled how they were to live; and underneath all
these varying emotions was a sudden, half-ludicrous, half-humiliating
sense of being cast into the shade, which made Mr Proctor's _fiancee_
laugh and made her cry, and brought her down altogether off the
temporary pedestal upon which she had stepped, not without a little
feminine satisfaction. When a woman is going to be married, especially
if that marriage falls later than usual, it is natural that she should
expect, for