In Rolph’s musings about Lucy he used to call her “little pickles” and “the sauce.” Once he got as far as “Cayenne,” a name that pleased him immensely, making up his mind, what little he had, to call her by one of those epithets—some day—when they grew a little more warmly intimate.
On the other hand, when Lucy went out walking, it was with the stern determination to severely snub the captain, pleasant as she told herself it would be to read Philip Oldroyd a good severe lesson, letting him see that she was not neglected; and then for the moment all her promises were forgotten, till she was going home again, when the only consolation she could find for her lapse was that her intentions had been of the most stringent kind; that she could not help meeting the captain, and that she really had tried all she could to avoid him; while there was the satisfaction of knowing that she was offering herself up as a kind of sacrifice upon the altar of duty for her brother’s welfare.
“Sooner or later dear Glynne must find out what a wretch that Rolph is, and then I shall be blamed—she’ll hate me; but all will be made happy for poor Moray.”
The consequence of all this was that poor Lucy about this time felt what an American would term very “mean” and ashamed of herself; mingled with this, too, was a great deal of sentiment. She was going to be a martyr—she supposed that she would die, the fact being that Lucy was very sick—sick at heart, and there was only one doctor in the world who could put her right.
Of course the thoughts turn here to the magnates of Harley and Brook and Grosvenor Street, and of Cavendish Square, but it was none of these. The prescription that would cure Lucy’s ailment was of the unwritten kind: it could only be spoken. The doctor to speak it was Philip Oldroyd, and its effect instantaneous, and this Lucy very well knew. But, like all her kind, she had a tremendous antipathy to physic, and, telling herself that she hated the doctor and all his works, she went on suffering in silence like the young lady named Viola, immortalised by one Shakespeare, and grievously sick of the same complaint.
It came like a surprise to Lucy one morning to receive a note from Glynne, written in a playful, half-chiding strain, full of reproach, and charging her with forgetting so old a friend.
“When it’s all her fault!” exclaimed Lucy, as she read on, to find Glynne was coming on that afternoon. “But Captain Rolph is sure to come with her, and that will spoil all. I declare I’ll go out. No, I won’t. I’ll stop, and I’ll be a martyr again, and stay and talk to him if it will make poor Moray happy, for I don’t care what becomes of me now.”
Somehow, though, Lucy looked very cheerful that day, her eyes flashing with excitement; and it was evident that she was making plans for putting into execution at the earliest opportunity.
As it happened, Mrs Alleyne announced that she was going over to the town on business, and directly after the early dinner a chaise hired from one of the farmers was brought round, and the dignified lady took her place beside the boy who was to drive.
“Heigho!” sighed Lucy, as she stood watching the gig with its clumsy, ill-groomed horse, and the shock-headed boy who drove, and compared the turnout with the spic-and-span well-ordered vehicles that were in use at Brackley; and then she went down the garden thinking how nice it was to have money, or rather its products, and of how sad it was that Moray’s pursuits should always be making such heavy demands upon their income, and never pay anything back.