'And he takes me for Dick,' said the Tutor, with an involuntary smile, pressing the little warm hand he held. 'We shall all come to it, my dear, some day—to the vanishing-point, where everything slips away from us but the memories of our youth. Well for us at that time if we have nothing but innocent memories of kindly deeds and loving faces—if we have no regrets, no sorrow, no remorse! Perhaps it is the happiest lot to have the slate wiped clean of all the storms and passions of later years, and to go back at the last, and to take away with us only the memory of the old innocent early days.'
He was a good deal moved. He might have committed dreadful crimes since the days of his innocent youth, instead of being a grave, sober, reverend Tutor of a college.
'You don't think he will ever be better?' Lucy sobbed.
'I don't think, even if his life is prolonged, that his mind will ever be clear again. I fear it has gone, quite gone. Perhaps it is better so: he will pass away happier; he will have no regrets; he will leave nothing behind.'
Lucy sat sobbing in the window-seat. If she had been older she would not have wept so freely: the young have so many tears to spare.
'There is nothing to regret,' he said tenderly, bending over the hand he still held. 'The dear Master has lived his life—a good life, and, I think, a happy one—and he will exchange it for a better and a happier. We have only to concern ourselves about those who are left—Mrs. Rae and your cousin. They must stay with us, Lucy; they must make the lodge their home. You must let them understand, dear'—here the Senior Tutor really pressed Lucy's hand, that he had held all the time he had been talking to her, and she had never once thought of drawing it away: he would have taken her in his arms, but the servants were coming up and down stairs—'you must let them quite understand,' he went on, 'that their home is here with us. I am sure we shall do everything to make them happy.'
Lucy hadn't the least idea what he meant.
She would have stayed at the lodge and taken her share of the nursing night and day, but the Tutor would not hear of it.
'You have got your work to do, my dear,' he said. He called her 'my dear' now quite naturally. 'You have all your work cut out before you to be ready for the examinations in June. You can't afford to risk breaking down for the sake of doing work that any woman can do. A trained nurse from Addenbroke's will do all, and more than all, you three dear anxious women together.'