“Nay, nay, Lucy,” said I, “I cannot let you take up that gloomy notion. Why should we change? We know each other far too well to alter our old likings. We will be the same, Lucy, when we are grey-headed.”
“Will you, Adam?—will all of us?—or are we indeed what we think we are?—are we not clothing ourselves and others with some ideal of our own, which hides the natural spirit from us?”
“Lucy!”
“Suppose one had done that,” said Lucy, hurriedly, turning her head away, and speaking more, as I thought, to herself than to me. “Suppose one had clothed another in an ideal so beautiful, so noble, that one almost trembled at one’s own wondrous gladness beholding it; and suppose that suddenly a blast came, and rent the glorious tissue here and there, and revealed a hidden thing of clay below; and one came to know that this noble spirit had never been at all, save in the fancy that created it. I dreamt of such a thing the other night; and dreams come true sometimes. Adam, we all change—not one, but all of us.”
I could not speak then, nor did I try to answer her. What could I say? it was the first check put upon my joyous confidence in all whom I called friends.
“Has your father told Hew, Lucy, that he thinks of leaving Murrayshaugh?” I inquired at last, eager to change the subject.
“I think not. I hope it is only possible, Adam; I know nothing more than that; my father does not trust me; but we must know soon.”
I left Murrayshaugh sadly that day. When I had nearly reached Mossgray, I met Lilias with some of her companions, driving her father’s little four-wheeled equipage. They paused a moment to receive my eager bashful salutations, and then drove on. The sunshine of that young face dispersed the cloud of doubt and unhappiness that hung about me; for anything false, anything sad, could not come near Lilias—
“I trow that countenance cannot lie
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie,”
I said to myself joyously as I went on. I repented me of my suspicions of Charlie. Lucy must be mistaken. His conduct could be explained. The bright mist fell again over the world, and I forgot my fears and anxieties; they all fled before the smile of Lilias.