'What have I got to go home for?' he said abruptly, his countenance darkening.
Lucy's aspect changed too, instantly. She waited.
Manisty's lower jaw dropped a little. A sombre bitterness veiled the eyes fixed upon the distant vistas of the garden.
'I hate my old house,' he said slowly. 'Its memories are intolerable. My father was a very eminent person, and had many friends. His children saw nothing of him, and had not much reason to love him. My mother died there—of an illness it is appalling to think of. No, no—not Alice's illness!—not that. And now, Alice,—I should see her ghost at every corner!'
Lucy watched him with fascination. Every note of the singular voice, every movement of the picturesque ungainly form, already spoke to her, poor child, with a significance that bit these passing moments into memory, as an etcher's acid bites upon his plate.
'Oh! she will recover!' she said, softly, leaning towards him unconsciously.
'No!—she will never recover,—never! And if she did, she and I have long ceased to be companions and friends. No, Miss Foster, there is nothing to call me home,—except politics. I may set up a lodging in London, of course. But as for playing the country squire—' He laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. 'No,—I shall let the place as soon as I can. Anyway, I shall never return to it—alone!'
He turned upon her suddenly. The tone in which the last word was spoken, the steady ardent look with which it was accompanied, thrilled the hot May air.
A sickening sense of peril, of swift intolerable remorse, rushed upon Lucy.
It gave her strength.
She changed her position, and spoke with perfect self-possession, gathering up her parasol and gloves.