Lucy was now silent in turn. She neither liked the doctrine nor believed it. She saw there must be sophistry, though she could not see where. She believed that there was either a confusion or a laxity of terms, which enabled Mr. Driesen to confound one thing with another; and as she could not detect where it existed, she wisely held her tongue.
Charles Tyrrell, who had heard the same doctrines before, did not choose to enter into a dispute upon the subject, but contented himself with throwing in a word or two every now and then to counteract Mr. Driesen's reasonings by reducing them to an absurdity. He broke in upon them too, from time to time, to call Lucy's attention to some beautiful spot or some curious object, and for almost all of them he had some little anecdote to tell, some little legend to narrate, or some observation to make, which showed that he had not frequented the scenes of his youth with eyes or ears shut, or heart or mind idle.
When they had passed the martello tower some way, and as the day was beginning to decline, he pointed out a road which led between two of the cliffs to the left, saying, "Now, which way shall we go? That takes us back to the Park, and is about two miles shorter than the way we came; but I do not know that it is so pleasant."
"Oh, the longest way, by all means, Mr. Tyrrell," replied Lucy Effingham, looking up in his face with a bright smile. "Such a pleasant ride as this can hardly be too long."
Often have we harangued upon the important results which spring from the smallest trifles. Those few words decided the fate of Charles Tyrrell and Lucy Effingham for ever. It was not that the bright smile with which they were accompanied lighted up in Charles Tyrrell's bosom any feelings which were not there before; for he fully believed afterward, as he had previously thought, that the first affections of her heart were given to another; but it was, that the very moment in which they stood there to decide on the one road or the other, was the very critical moment of their fate; that every after-moment through all time and eternity was affected by it; and that the consequences of Lucy's decision, by the concatenation of a thousand fine, small incidents, brought events to pass that no one then did calculate or ever could have calculated.