all the little devices she could think
of to show the warm affection she really felt for Lucy--a method which
made the heart of Lucy more and more sick with that sense of falsehood
which sometimes rose in her, almost to the height of passion. A woman
who had ever learned to use harsh words, or to whose mind it had ever
been possible to do or say anything to hurt another, would no doubt have
burst forth upon the girl with some reproach or intimation of doubt
which might have cleared the matter so far as Bice went. But Lucy had no
such words at her command. She could not say anything unkind. It was not
in her. She could be silent, indeed, but not even that, so far as to
"hurt the feelings" of her companion. The effect, therefore, was only
that Lucy laboured to maintain a little artificial conversation, which
in its turn reacted upon her mind, showing that even in herself there
was the same disposition to insincerity which she had begun to discover
in the world. She could say nothing to Bice about the matters which a
little while before, when all was well, she had grieved over and
objected to. Now she had nothing to say on such subjects. That the girl
should be set up to auction, that she should put forth all those arts in
which she had been trained, to attract and secure young Montjoie, or any
like him, were things which had passed beyond her sphere. To think of
them rendered her heart more sick, her head more giddy. But if Bice
married some one whom she did not love, that was not so bad as to think
that perhaps she herself all this time had been living with, and loving,
in sacred trust and faith, a man who even by her side was full of
thoughts unknown to her, given to another. Sometimes Lucy closed her
eyes in a sort of sick despair, feeling everything about her go round
and round. But she said nothing to throw any light upon the state of her
being. Sir Tom felt a little gravity--a little distance in his wife; but
he himself was much occupied with a new and painful subject of thought.
And Jock observed nothing at all, being at a stage when man (or boy) is
wholly possessed with affairs of his own. He had his troubles, too. He
was not easy about that breach with his master now that they were
separated. When Bice was kind to him a gleam of triumph, mingled with
pity, made him remorseful towards that earlier friend; and when she was
unkind a bitter sense of fellowship turned Jock's thoughts towards that
sublime ideal of mascu