“Yes,” said the little boy, dropping down again satisfied upon his fleecy rug. How could he know anything about it? but Lucy took no time to think. She hastened to her room and put on her hat, and was hurrying along the road to the White House, before she had thought what to say when she got there. It was just twelve o’clock, a moment at which Mrs. Stone was always to be found in her parlor, resting for half an hour in the middle of her labors. Lucy found herself tapping at the parlor-door in the fervor of her first resolution. She went in with eyes full of tearful light. Mrs. Stone and Miss Southwood were both in the room. They turned round with great surprise at the sight of her.
“How do you do, Lucy?” Mrs. Stone said, very coldly, not even putting out her hand.
“Oh,” cried Lucy, full of her generous impulse. “Why has Mr. St. Clair gone away?”
“I told you,” said Miss Southwood. “I told you! the girl doesn’t know her own mind.”
Mrs. Stone caught her this time by both hands. “Lucy,” she cried, “don’t trifle or be a little fool. If this is what you mean, Frank will come back. You may be sure he did not want to go away.”
Lucy felt the soft hands which took hold of her grip like fingers of iron, and felt herself grappled with an eager force she could scarcely withstand. They came round her with anxious faces, seizing hold upon her. For a moment she almost gasped for breath, half suffocated by the closing in around her of this trap into which she had betrayed herself. But the emergency brought back her strength and self-command. “It is not that,” she said, with poignant distress and shame, though she had no reason to be ashamed. “Oh, forgive me, it is not that!”
Mrs. Stone dropped her hands as if they had been hot coals, and turned away. “This is a moment when I prefer to be alone, Miss Trevor,” she said, as she was in the habit of saying to the girls who disturbed her retirement; “if there is anything in which I can serve you, pray say so without any loss of time. I reserve this half hour in the day to myself.”
Thus chilled after the red heat of excitement into which she had been raised, Lucy stood trembling, scarcely knowing what to say.
“I beg your pardon,” she faltered at last; “I came because I was so unhappy about— Mr. St. Clair.”
“Lucy, what do you mean?” cried Miss Southwood. “Don’t frighten the child, Maria! what do you mean? You drive him away, and then you come and tell us you are unhappy. What do you intend us to understand?”