Mrs. Arkell drew her chair nearer to Lucy, and dropped her voice.
"Our position is this, my dear. A very great portion of Mr. Arkell's property is locked up in his stock, which is immense. I should not have kept on manufacturing as he has done; and I believe it has been partly for the sake of those rubbishing workmen. Unless he can get some extraneous help, some temporary assistance, he will have to force his stock to sale at a loss, and it would just be ruin. Miss Fauntleroy proposes to advance any sum he may require, as soon as the marriage has taken place, and there's no doubt he will accept it. It will be only a temporary loan, you know; but it will save us a great, a ruinous loss."
"She proposes to advance it?" echoed Lucy, struck with the words, in the midst of her pain.
"She does. She is as good hearted a girl as ever lived, and proposed it freely. In fact, she would be ready and willing to advance it at once, for of course she knows it would be a safe loan, but Mr. Arkell will not hear of it. She knows what our wishes are upon the subject of the marriage, and she sees that Travice has been holding back; and but for her very good-natured disposition she might not have tolerated it. However, I hope all will soon be settled now, and she and Travice married. Lucy, my dear, I rely upon you for Mr. Arkell's sake, of whom you are so fond, for Travice's own sake, to forward on this by any little means in your power. And, remember, the confidence I have reposed in you must not be broken."
Lucy sat cold and still. In honour she must no longer think of a possible union with Travice—must never more allow word or look from him seeming to point to it.
"For Mr. Arkell's sake," she kept repeating to herself, as if she were in a dream; "for Travice's own sake!" She saw the future as clearly as though it had been mapped out before her eyes in some prophetic vision: Travice would marry Barbara Fauntleroy and her riches. She almost wished she might never see him more; it could only bring to her additional misery.
Charlotte Arkell came in with Barbara Fauntleroy. Sophy had gone home with the other one for the rest of the day. An old aunt, bed-ridden three parts of her time, had lived with the young ladies since the death of their father. But they were not so very young; and they were naturally independent. Barbara was quite as old as Travice Arkell.
"How shall I bear to see them together?" thought Lucy, as Barbara Fauntleroy sat down opposite to her, in her rustling silk of many colours, and no end of gold trinkets jingling about her. "I wonder why I was born? But for papa, I could wish I had died as Harry did!"
For that first evening, however, she was spared. Their little maid arrived in much commotion, asking to see Miss Lucy. Her papa was feeling worse than when she left home, was the word she brought, and he thought if Lucy did not mind it, he should like her to go back to him at once.
Lucy hastened home. She found her father very poorly; feverish, and coughing a great deal. It was the foreshadowing of an illness from which he was destined never to recover.