"What has that to do with it?" she cried, stung suddenly to cruelty; "what has that to do with it, when, if you were the only man in the world, I would not marry you?"
Fred, hurt and shocked by this unexpected attack from gentle Lucy, gathered himself up with something more like dignity than he had displayed in the course of the interview.
"Oh, very well," he said, taking up his hat; "perhaps one of these days you will be sorry for what you have done. I'm not much, I know, but you won't find many people to care for you as I would have cared." His voice broke suddenly, and he made his way rather blindly to the door.
Lucy was trembling all over, and as pale as, a moment ago, she had been red. She wanted to say something, as she watched him fumbling unsteadily with the door-handle; but her lips refused to frame the words.
Without lifting his head he passed into the little passage. Lucy heard his retreating footsteps, then her eye fell on a roll of newspapers at her feet. She picked them up hastily.
"Fred," she cried, "you have forgotten these."
But he vouchsafed no answer, and in another moment she heard the outer door shut.
She stood a moment with the ridiculous bundle in her hand—Tit-Bits and a pink, crushed copy of The Sporting Times—then something between a laugh and a sob rose in her throat, the papers fell to the ground, and sinking on her knees by the table, she buried her face in her hands and burst into bitter weeping.
Gertrude, coming in from church some ten minutes later, found her sister thus prostrate.