“Oh, no; it is nothing,” she said, as a tremor ran through her frame, and she hesitated as to what she should do, ending by exclaiming suddenly that she must go back home at once.
“But you’ll come and see me train to-morrow morning,” said Rolph.
“No, no. Oh, no. I could not,” cried Lucy; and she turned and hurried away.
“But you will come,” said Rolph, gazing after her. “I’ll lay two to one—five to one—fifty to one—she comes. She’s caught—wired—netted. Pretty little rustic-looking thing. I rather like the little lassie; she’s so fresh and innocent. I wonder what dignified Madame Glynne would say. Bet a hundred to one little Lucy’s thinking about me now, and making up her mind to come.”
He was right; Lucy was thinking about him, and wishing he had been at the bottom of the sea that morning before he had met her.
“Oh, what will Mr Oldroyd think?” she sobbed, as the tears ran down her face. “It’s nothing to him, and he’s nothing to me; but it’s horrible for him to have seen me walking out at this time in the morning, and alone, with that stupid, common, racing, betting creature, whom I absolutely abominate.”
She walked on, weeping silently for a few minutes before resuming her self-reproaches.
“I’m afraid it was very wicked and wrong and forward of me, but I did so want to know whether he really cared for Glynne. And he doesn’t—he doesn’t—he does not,” she sobbed passionately. “He’s a wicked, bad, empty-headed, deceitful monster; and he’d make Glynne wretched all her life. Why, he was making love to me, and talking slightingly of her all the time.”
Here there was another burst of sobs, in the midst of which, and the accompanying blinding tears, she stooped down to pick another mushroom, but only to viciously throw it away, for it to fall bottom upwards impaled upon the sharp thorns of a green furze bush close at hand.
“I don’t care,” she cried; “they may think what they like, both of them, and they may say what they like. I was trying to fight my poor, dear, injured, darling brother’s battle, and to make things happier for him, and if I’m a martyr through it, I will be, and I don’t care a pin.”