"But I have not been brought up like Mabel," she thought, too willing to throw the blame on others, if by so doing she at all removed it from herself. "How can she ever get through it," she said to herself, eying disconsolately the large basket of clean linen, caps, and frills, which Betsy had just laid down before her, saying that Miss Lesly had said she would be kind enough to sort them.
She forced herself, however, to attempt it with many a sigh over its difficulties. She had scarcely finished her task, when she saw Clair coming up to the house, and, feeling a better conscience from her exertions, for her spirits were easily elated, she went down stairs to meet him.
When she entered the sitting-room, where, not venturing to knock or ring, he had already seated himself, she found him with his head buried in his hands, which rested on the table before him. He looked up as she entered, and a momentary shudder passed over him, which she could not help perceiving. His face was deadly pale, and his features drawn together, and bearing the traces of deeper thought than that in which he usually indulged. He had indeed done many things more careless, and ten times as wrong, but the consequences had never followed so rapidly nor been so heart-rending.
"Oh, you have suffered," exclaimed Lucy, "and what a night I have passed!"
"If you can see Miss Lesly," returned Clair, scarcely heeding her observation, "ask her, in mercy, to see me for a few minutes."
His first thoughts are of Mabel, thought Lucy, with ready jealousy, not one kind word for me.
"Will you?" said he, seeing her hesitate, "will you ask her to see me? What does she say? How does she bear it? Does she reproach me?"
"What question shall I answer first?" said Lucy, with a little of her returning levity.
Clair bit his lip, and looked at her with surprise, but Lucy quickly recovering herself, said quietly,