“Sit down again, Lucy, and don't be angry with me,” said Lady Lendrick, pressing her back into her chair. “Your position is a very painful one,—let us not make it worse by irritation; and to avoid all possibility of this, we will not look back at all, but only regard the future.”
“That may be more easy for you to do than for me”
“Easy or not easy, Lucy, we have no alternative; we cannot change the past.”
“No, no, no! I know that,—I know that,” cried she, bitterly, as her clasped hands dropped upon her knee.
“For that reason then, Lucy, forget it, ignore it. I have no need to tell you, my dear, that my own life has not been a very happy one, and if I venture to give advice, it is not without having had my share of sorrows. You say you cannot go back to the Priory?”
“No; that is impossible.”
“Unpleasant it would certainly be, and all the more so with these marriage festivities. The wedding, I suppose, will take place there?”
“I don't know; I have not heard;” and she tried to say this with an easy indifference.
“Trafford is disinherited, is he not?—passed over in the entail, or something or other?”
“I don't know,” she muttered out; but this time her confusion was not to be concealed.