‘So I feared.’
‘Oh! Robert, we must take double care for the poor little thing.’
‘I will do my best,’ he answered.
‘Do you know what Owen intends?’ said Lucilla, in low, alarmed accents.
‘He has told you? It is a wild purpose; but I doubt whether to dissuade him, except for your sake,’ he added, with his first softening towards her, like balm to the sore spot in her heart.
‘Never mind me, I can take care of myself,’ she said, while the muscles of her throat ached and quivered with emotion. ‘I would not detain him to be pitied and forgiven.’
‘Do not send him away in pride,’ said Robert, sadly.
‘Am I not humbled enough?’ she said; and her drooping head and eye seemed to thrill him with their wonted power.
One step he made towards her, but checked himself, and said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘Currie, the architect, has a brother, a civil engineer, just going out to Canada to lay out a railway. It might be an opening for Owen to go as his assistant—unless you thought it beneath him.’
These last words were caused by an uncontrollable look of disappointment. But it was not the proposal: no; but the change of manner that struck her. The quiet indifferent voice was like water quenching a struggling spark, but in a moment she recovered her powers. ‘Beneath him! Oh, no. I told you we were humbled. I always longed for his independence, and I am glad that he should not go alone.’