[CHAPTER IX.]
LUCY'S PRINCE APPEARS ON THE SCENE.
Following the direction of Lucy's eyes, Margaret saw a young gentleman walking towards the two old men in the grounds below. He paused, and Mr. Weston spoke some words; the next moment Mr. Hart and the young gentleman shook hands warmly.
"Ah!" thought Margaret, with secret satisfaction, "here is our prince. Now all the rest is easy." She was vainly confident of her powers. "So, my dear," she said aloud to Lucy, "we have discovered the grand secret."
The flame in Lucy's cheek grew stronger, and she hid her blushes on Margaret's shoulder.
"You will not tell?" she whispered.
"Not I," replied Margaret, with tender caresses; "but do you know, my dear, you have been making me very unhappy? Keeping a secret, and such a secret, from me!"
"Why, Margaret? You did not suspect me?"
"Oh! no, of course I suspected nothing, being naturally dull-witted, and not being a woman. Well, but now it is all right. I shall know everything--I must know everything, from A to Z. If you keep a single letter of the alphabet from me, I shall run and tell them all about it."
There was but little to tell. Chance had taken the young gentleman, Gerald Weston, to the house in which Lucy lived before, her father's return home, and having seen Lucy, something more than chance had afterwards directed his steps thither very frequently. I am afraid there had been secret meetings out of the house; girls and young men will do these things now-a-days. Ah, nonsense! What do I mean by now-a-days? Have they not done them from time immemorial? Think of the delicious secret meetings that must have taken place between Jacob and Laban's daughters in the old patriarchal times! And you, my dear lady, whose eyes may haply light upon these lines, cannot you look back upon such-like stolen minutes? So these two young persons met and met again, and Cupid led the way with his torch. Gerald Weston's love for Lucy was an honest love, and it was long before he confessed it, and received in return a confession of love from her lips. The simplest of stories.