“If she had been a girl with any feeling how could she have married so?” she cried. “Not one friend with him--his father and mother holding aloof. No, Bertie, it is very good of you to say so, but I have not any hope. Our boy is lost to us. Of course, when we are out of the way, he will come and take his place here, and she will take my place, which is no pleasant thing to think of; but in the meantime we have lost our boy.”
“Indeed, you must not think so,” said the Rector, “when the first infatuation is over, Arthur will come back. He will not be happy in so different a sphere. He will miss you--he will miss Lucy--and all his old ways. In--how long shall I say? in a month, six weeks--he will come back and beg your pardon.”
“I hope he will not have so little perception,” said Lady Curtis, the colour rising in her face. “You speak as if it were a case in which such a conclusion was possible; and no doubt there are such cases; but this girl--this girl is--Don’t ask me--how can I tell you all the impossibilities of it? I see them, and I know that Arthur is lost to us. As his poor father says, ‘he might as well be dead!’”
Lucy had not said anything, but Lady Curtis saw without looking that her daughter was not on her side. Lucy’s head was very erect--her mouth was closed firmly, as if she was holding herself in; there was a certain resistance in the poise of that head, and displeasure in the mouth. Lady Curtis stopped short after she had answered her nephew, and turning suddenly round to her daughter burst forth: “Say what you mean, Lucy--say what you mean! I would rather have anything said to me than see you keep it in and despise what your mother says.”
“How could I despise what you say, mamma,” said Lucy, “or what you think either? But I should like Bertie to know that I cannot blame Arthur as other people do. He is dreadfully wrong in some things; but we can’t tell he is wrong at all in the great thing. Mamma, I cannot help it--I don’t want to vex you. For anything we know, she may be the one wife in the world for Arthur; and when he was promised to her, pledged to her, and had got her love, and given her his--I should have hated my brother if he had forsaken her. Yes, I know you will be angry--but I can’t help it. I might have been glad in a way--it might have been better for the family; but I should have hated and despised him. He could never have been Arthur to me any more--that, indeed, would have been as bad as dying,” said Lucy emphatically with fire in her eyes.