Even Fanny did not as yet give Lucy credit for half her attractiveness. After an hour’s talking the interview between the husband and wife ended in a message to Lucy, begging her to join them both in the book-room.
“Aunt Lucy,” said a chubby little darling, who was taken up into his aunt’s arms as he spoke, “papa and mamma ’ant ’oo in te tuddy, and I musn’t go wis ’oo.”
Lucy, as she kissed the boy and pressed his face against her own, felt that her blood was running quick to her heart.
“Musn’t ’oo go wis me, my own one?” she said, as she put her playfellow down; but she played with the child only because she did not wish to betray even to him that she was hardly mistress of herself. She knew that Lord Lufton was at Framley; she knew that her brother had been to him; she knew that a proposal had been made that he should come there that day to dinner. Must it not therefore be the case that this call to a meeting in the study had arisen out of Lord Lufton’s arrival at Framley? and yet, how could it have done so? Had Fanny betrayed her in order to prevent the dinner invitation? It could not be possible that Lord Lufton himself should have spoken on the subject! And then she again stooped to kiss the child, rubbed her hands across her forehead to smooth her hair, and erase, if that might be possible, the look of care which she wore, and then descended slowly to her brother’s sitting-room.
Her hand paused for a second on the door ere she opened it, but she had resolved that, come what might, she would be brave. She pushed it open and walked in with a bold front, with eyes wide open, and a slow step.
“Frank says that you want me,” she said.
Mr. Robarts and Fanny were both standing up by the fireplace, and each waited a second for the other to speak when Lucy entered the room; and then Fanny began,—
“Lord Lufton is here, Lucy.”
“Here! Where? At the parsonage?”
“No, not at the parsonage; but over at Framley Court,” said Mark.