'Seen him?' Lucy exclaimed, flushing scarlet, and her eyes smarting with tears of anger and humiliation. 'I never intend to see him again! His own people are here.'
'What has that got to do with it?' said Maria, sitting down on the floor in the middle of a heap of books.
'Everything. He doesn't want me if he has got his people.'
Lucy was thinking of Wyatt Edgell's mother. She had been haunted by her pale patrician face all through the exam.
'I don't see that,' Maria said hotly. 'He will want you more. You ought to stand between him and them, and see they are not too hard upon him. I think you ought to have gone to his mother at once, and told her everything.'
'I?' Lucy gasped—'I?'
'Yes, you. Who else should take his part at a time like this? Oh, you are a poor coward! You are not half good enough for him!'
The tears were in her eyes as she spoke; she had to put up her hand and dash them off her hideous pale lashes. She looked as if she would have liked to have taken Lucy in her strong arms and shaken her.
'I'm afraid I am a coward,' Lucy said humbly; and then she began to cry.
She wasn't content with crying, she began to sob hysterically. She had gone through a great deal that day, and her nerves were shaken. Maria got up from the floor and came over to her. She put her on the couch, and took off her hat, and stroked her hair back, and soothed her, but Pamela took no notice of her; she only sat tearing up her papers.