"She will know better some day," said Miss Wodehouse, wiping her eyes; "and oh, Mr Wentworth, if papa ever gets better--!" Here the poor lady broke down into inarticulate weeping. "But I know you will stand by us," she said, amid her tears; "it is all the comfort I have--and Lucy--"
There was no sound of any footstep on the stair--nothing but the ticking of the timepiece on the mantelshelf, and the rustling of the curtains in the soft morning breeze which came through the open window, and Miss Wodehouse's crying. The Curate had not expected to see Lucy, and knew in his heart that it was better they should not meet just at this moment; but, notwithstanding this, it was strange how bitter and disappointed he felt, and what an impatient longing he had for one look of her, even though it should be a look which would drive him frantic with mortified love and disappointed expectation. To know that she was under the same roof, and that she knew he was here, but kept away, and did not care to see him, was gall to his excited mind. He went away hastily, pressing poor Miss Wodehouse's hand with a kind of silent rage. "Don't talk about Lucy," he said, half to himself, his heart swelling and throbbing at the sound of the name. It was the first time he had spoken it aloud to any ear but his own, and he left the house tingling with an indignation and mortification and bitter fondness which could not be expressed in words. What he was about to do was for her sake, and he thought to himself, with a forlorn pride, that she would never know it, and it did not matter. He could not tell that Lucy was glancing out furtively over the blind, ashamed of herself in her wounded heart for doing so, and wondering whether even now he was occupied with that unworthy love which had made an everlasting separation between them. If it had been any one worthy, it would have been different, poor Lucy thought, as she pressed back the tears into her eyes, and looked out wistfully at him over the blind. She above-stairs in the sick-room, and he in the fresh garden hastening out to his work, were both thinking in their hearts how perverse life was, and how hard it was not to be happy--as indeed they well might in a general way; though perhaps one glance of the Curate's eyes upward, one meeting of looks, might have resulted quite reasonably in a more felicitous train of thinking, at least for that day.