"I'm not out of my mind," said Lucy, "and I'm sure Simon wouldn't wish me to marry him if I didn't love him."
"Did she really say that last night, Mrs. Comstock?" said Mr. Laud.
"Ah well, then," he heaved a sigh of relief, "it's all right! I surprised her this morning. I was too sudden. I frightened you, Lucy darling. Have some breakfast, and you'll feel quite differently."
"She'd _better_ feel differently," said Mrs. Comstock, now trembling with happy temper. "I don't know what she's said this mad thing for, I'm sure, Mr. Laud, considering how she's been talking about you and wanting you all this month; but a little consideration will soon teach her."
"Do you know, Lucy, what they say of girls who try to behave as you're behaving? Do you know the name the world has for what you're doing? Have you thought for a moment of your father and mother, and what they'll say?"
"No, I haven't," said Lucy. "But no thinking will make any difference. Nothing will."
Nevertheless, there did flash through her mind then a picture of what would happen at Hawkesworth. She had not thought of Hawkesworth; she saw now the straggling street, the church, the high downs; she saw the people who had known her since she was a baby, she saw her parents and relations. Yes, there would be a bad time to go through. And for what? Because for a moment a man whom she did not know, a man whom she would never see again, had taken her hand in his! Perhaps she _was_ mad. She did not know. She only knew that she would never marry Simon Laud.
"Oh, Simon, I'm so sorry! I know I'm behaving very badly. But it's better to behave like that now than for us to be unhappy always."
"It's quite all right, Lucy, dear. I understand perfectly. You'll feel quite differently very soon. I surprised you. I shouldn't have done it, but I was so anxious to see you--a lover's privilege."
"Now," he ended with that happy optimistic air that he had developed so happily in the pulpit, "let us all have breakfast, shall we?"
Lucy shook her head, and then turned and went back to her room.
A strange day followed. She sat there until luncheon, alone, hearing the soft buzz of the traffic below her window, interrupted once by the maid, who, after her permission had been given, moved softly about the room, setting it to rights. It was not quite true, that she was thinking during that time--it could scarcely be called thought--it was rather that a succession of pictures passed before her brain--her parents in every attitude of alarm and remonstrance and command, the village and its gossips, long long imprisonment beneath those high downs, and finally her parents again. How strange it was that last night's little incident should have illuminated everything in her life, and nothing more surely than her father and mother! How queer that a strange young man, with whom in all her life she had exchanged only one or two words, should have told her more of her own people than all her living with them could!