constitution far too delicate for governess life, positively forbidding her going back to her situation for another day.
Honor had left the room with him. She found Lucilla with her face hidden in the sofa cushions, but the next moment met a tremulous half-spasmodic smile.
‘Am I humbled enough?’ she said. ‘Failed, failed, failed! One by my flirting, two by my temper, three by my health! I can’t get my own living, and necessity sends me home, without the grace of voluntary submission.’
‘Nay, my child, the very calling it home shows that it need not humble you to return.’
‘It is very odd that I should like it so much!’ said Lucy; ‘and now,’ turning away as usual from sentiment, ‘what shall I say to Mrs. Bostock? What a wretch she will think me! I must go over and see all those children once more. I hope I shall have a worthy successor, poor little rogues. I must rouse myself to write!’
‘Not yet, my dear.’
‘Not while you can sit and talk. I have so much to hear of at home! I have never inquired after Mr. Henderson! Not dead?’
‘You have not heard? It was a very long, gradual decay. He died on the 12th.’
‘Indeed! he was a kind old man, and home will not be itself without his white head in the reading-desk. Have you filled up the living.’
‘I have offered it’—and there was a pause—‘to Robert Fulmort.’