many trying proofs
of truthfulness and secrecy under circumstances where most females in
her condition of life would have given way. As a matter of course, she
was obliged to receive her master's bribes, otherwise she would have
been instantly dismissed, as one who presumed to favor Lucy's interest
and oppose his own. Her fertility of fancy, however, joined to
deep-rooted affection for his daughter, enabled her to return as a
recompense for Sir Thomas's bribes, that description of one-sided truth
which transfuses fiction into its own character and spirit, just as a
drop or two of any coloring fluid will tinge a large portion of water
with its own hue. Her replies, therefore, when sifted and examined,
always bore in them a sufficient portion of truth to enable her, on the
strong point of veracity on which she boldly stood, to bear herself
out with triumph; owing, indeed, to a slight dash in her defence of the
coloring we have described. Lucy felt that the agitation of mind, or
rather, we should say, the agony of spirit which she had been of late
forced to struggle with, had affected her health more than she could
have anticipated. That and the unusual fatigue of a long journey in a
night coach, eked out by a jolting drive to Wicklow at a time when she
required refreshment and rest, told upon her constitution, although a
naturally healthy one. For the next three or four days after her arrival
at Summerfield Cottage, she experienced symptoms of slight fever,
apparently nervous. Every attention that could be paid to her she
received at the hands of Mrs. Mainwaring, and her own maid, who seldom
was a moment from her bedside. Two or three times a day she was seized
with fits of moping, during which she deplored her melancholy lot in
life, feared she had offended her kind hostess by intruding, without
either notice or announcement, upon the quiet harmony of her family, and
begged her again and again to forgive her; adding, "That as soon as her
recovery should be established, she would return to her father's house
to die, she hoped, and join mamma; and this," she said, "was her last
and only consolation."

Mrs. Mainwaring saw at once that her complaint was principally on the
nerves, and lost no time in asking permission to call in medical advice.
To this, Lucy, whose chief object was to remain unknown and in secrecy
for the present, strongly objected; but by the mild and affectionate
remonstrances of Mrs. Mainwaring, as well as