hopes seemed
about to be realised. Sir Tom laid down his paper, looked at her frankly
without any shield, and said, as she had so often imagined him saying,
"I want to talk to you, Lucy." How glad she was that little Tom was not
downstairs that morning!

She looked at him across the table with a brightening countenance, and
said, "Yes, Tom!" with such warm eagerness and sudden pleasure that her
look penetrated his very heart. It implied a great deal more than Sir
Tom intended and thought, and he was a man of very quick intelligence.
The expectation in her eyes touched him beyond a thousand complaints.

"I had an interview yesterday, in which you were much concerned," he
said; then made a pause, with such a revolution going on within him as
seldom happens in a mature and self-collected mind. He had begun with
totally different sentiments from those which suddenly came over him at
the sight of her kindling face. When he said, "I want to talk to you,
Lucy," he had meant to speak of her interview with Mr. Rushton, to point
out to her the folly of what she was doing, and to show her how it was
that he should be compelled to do everything that was in his power to
oppose her. He did not mean to go to the root of the matter, as he had
done before, when he was obliged to admit to himself that he had
failed--but to address himself to the secondary view of the question, to
the small prospect there was of doing any good. But when he caught her
eager, questioning look, her eyes growing liquid and bright with
emotion, her face full of restrained anxiety and hope, Sir Tom's heart
smote him. What did she think he was going to say? Not anything about
money, important as that subject was in their life--but something far
more important, something that touched her to the quick, a revelation
upon which her very soul hung. He was startled beyond measure by this
disclosure. He had thought she did not feel, and that her heart
unawakened had regarded calmly, with no pain to speak of, the new state
of affairs of which he himself was guiltily conscious; but that eager
look put an end in a moment to his delusion. He paused and swerved
mentally as if an angel had suddenly stepped into his way.

"It is about--that will of your father's," he said.

Lucy, gazing at him with such hope and expectation, suddenly sank, as it
were, prostrate in the depth of a disappointment that almost took the
life out of her. She did not indeed fall physically or fain