When Lucy got well enough to see anyone, the first person she saw was the Master of St. Benedict's. He had inquired for her every day during her illness, and he had sent daily messages by Mary. He reproached himself for letting her walk back on that last day he had seen her. He ought to have known that she had broken down when she fainted in the greenhouse.
He was not at all prepared for the change in her. She had not only grown thin and white, but her eyes had changed; they were graver and steadier, and something that used to be there, he didn't know what, had gone out of them.
'The lodge is quite finished,' the Master said cheerfully, as he took his seat by her side; 'your home is quite ready for you, my dear.'
Then Lucy had to say to him what she had sent for him to say. It was rather difficult to say, and she said it in her little weak, faltering voice.
'I have found out,' she said, 'while I have been lying here, that I have made a mistake. It is not the first mistake I have made—and—and thank God I have found it out in time!'
Her voice broke, and her lips quivered, and a faint flush of colour came into her cheeks.
'We have all made mistakes, my darling,' the Master said, stroking her little thin hand that lay on the coverlet. 'Don't let this little mistake you have made, or fancy you have made, trouble you; you have all your life to set it right. You have only to get well as fast as you can; your new home is ready, quite ready, for you.'
Lucy shivered.
'That is it,' she said eagerly; 'I want you to help me to set it right. I have ruined one man's life; I will not ruin another. I—I want you to give me up.'
She did not tell him she was not worthy, she knew that would be of no avail; she only asked him to give her up.