‘The work would suit his mathematical and scientific turn. Then, since you do not object, I will see whether he would like it, or if it be practicable in case Miss Charlecote should approve.’
Robert seized this opportunity of concluding the interview. Lucy ran up-stairs for the fierce quarter-deck walking that served her instead of tears, as an ebullition that tired down her feelings by exhaustion.
Some of her misery was for Owen, but would the sting have been so acute had Robert Fulmort been more than the true friend?
Phœbe’s warning, given in that very room, seemed engraven on each panel. ‘If you go on as you are doing now, he does not think it would be right for a clergyman.’
Could Lucilla have looked through the floor, she would have seen Robert with elbows on the window-sill, and hands locked over his knitted brows; and could she have interpreted his short-drawn sighs, she would have heard, ‘Poor child! poor child! It is not coquetry. That was injustice. She loves me. She loves me still! Why do I believe it only too late? Why is this trial sent me, since I am bound to the scheme that precludes my marriage? What use is it to see her as undisciplined—as unfit as ever? I know it! I always knew it. But I feel still a traitor to her! She had warning! She trusted the power of my attachment in spite of my judgment! Fickle to her, or a falterer to my higher pledge? Never! I must let her see the position—crush any hope—otherwise I cannot trust myself, nor deal fairly by her. Heaven help us both!’
When they next met, Robert had propounded his Canadian
project, and Owen had caught at it. Idleness had never been his fault, and he wanted severe engrossing labour to stun pain and expel thought. He was urgent to know what standard of attainments would be needful, and finding Robert ignorant on this head, seized his hat, and dashed out in the gaslight to the nearest bookseller’s for a treatise on surveying.
Robert was taken by surprise, or he might have gone too. He looked as if he meditated a move, but paused as Lucy said, ‘Poor fellow, how glad he is of an object!’
‘May it not be to his better feelings like sunshine to morning dew?’ said Robert, sighing. ‘I hear a very high character of Mr. Currie, and a right-minded, practical, scientific man may tell more on a disposition like his—’
‘Than parsons and women,’ said Lucilla, with a gleam of her old archness.