“Why, then, do you, who have now so much at your command, pass more than half your time between the heated bricks of Wall Street, when you know how happy we should all be to see you, here, among us, again?”
“I have not been certain of this; that has been the sole reason, of my absence. Had I known I should be welcome, nothing would have induced me to suffer Grace to pass the last six sad, sad, months by herself.”
“Known that you should be welcome! Surely you have not supposed, Lucy, that I can ever regard you as anything but welcome, here?”
“I had no allusion to you—thought not of you, Miles, at all”—answered Lucy, with the quiet manner of one who felt she was thinking, acting, and speaking no more than what was perfectly right—“My mind was dwelling altogether on Grace.”
“Is it possible you could doubt of Grace's willingness to see you, at all times and in all places, Lucy!”
“I have doubted it—have thought I was acting prudently and well, in staying away, just at this time, though I now begin to fear the decision has been hasty and unwise.”
“May I ask why Lucy Hardinge has come to so singular and violent an opinion, as connected with her bosom friend, and almost sister, Grace Wallingford?”
“That almost sister! Oh! Miles, what is there I possess which I would not give, that there might be perfect confidence, again, between you and me, on this subject; such confidence as existed when we were boy and girl-children, I might say.”
“And what prevents it? Certain I am the alienation does not, cannot come from me. You have only to speak, Lucy, to have an attentive listener; to ask, to receive the truest answers. What can, then, prevent the confidence you wish?”
“There is one obstacle—surely, Miles, you can readily imagine what I mean?”