"Really, Lucy," said Caroline, a little sharply, "you should not give way so, it will not mend matters now."
Lucy had not temper for the "soft answer," and was too spiritless to retort an angry one.
"I think," said Hargrave, "you must have met a fellow-voyager of mine, a Captain Clair—he said he was going to stay with his uncle at Aston."
"Yes," said Lucy, despairingly, "I did meet him; and he said he knew you."
"How did you like him?" he pursued, anxious to make her speak.
"Oh, pretty well," she said, carelessly; but a burning blush kindled brighter and deeper on her pale cheek, as his penetrating eye watched for her reply.
She moved impatiently beneath his glance; but she felt that it was not withdrawn, and painfully conscious of her increasing color, she rose abruptly, and turning on him, for a moment, like the wearied stag at bay, she looked angrily at him, and then hastened from the room.
Still, however, as she once more retreated to her chamber, and shut the door violently behind her, that glance seemed to follow her, not simply inquisitive, but compassionately answering her own angry expression, as if deprecating its violence.
"He must know something about me," she thought. "Could Clair have spoken of her to him, and in the same terms, which she had overheard him use to his uncle, accompanied, perhaps, by ridicule. Yes," thought she, actually throwing herself upon the floor in the vehemence of her passion, "he sees me with Clair's eyes—if he pities, he despises me, as the girl who was only used as the cloak to more honorable attentions to Mabel. I cannot endure this—anything but to be both neglected and despised. There is one, at least," she added, to herself, proudly, "who appreciates me—but this time I will keep my own counsel." She rose, and looked at the glass—but it now only told her that the boasted beauty of the night before had faded before her tears. "I will weep no more," she said, angrily, brushing the heavy drops from her cheeks, "I will weep no more—but, I fear my heart will become hard indeed."
A passionate burst of tears again interrupted her resolutions, and she turned from the disappointing mirror, which had, only a few hours before, reflected a form of airy liveliness, which had even astonished herself.