“The party has been rather spoiled by the rain,” she said.
“I suppose so,” he answered, vaguely. “Did you like it? Sometimes one does not mind the rain.”
“I minded it very much,” said Lucy, with a sigh; then, feeling that she was likely to commit herself if she pursued this subject, she added, “I am rather glad the time is over for these parties; they are—a trouble. The first one is pleasant—the others—”
Then she paused, and Philip’s mind went back to the first one, and to this which was just over. He had not enjoyed the first, except the end of it, when he took Katie home. And this he had enjoyed, but not the end. His imagination escaped from the present scene, and he seemed to see Katie going along the muddy road, under his umbrella, but without him. What could she think? that he had abandoned her? or would she care whether he abandoned her or not?
“That depends,” said Philip, oracularly, and, like Lucy, with a sigh; though the sigh was from a different cause. Then he looked at her across the table. She had not seated herself, but stood in her habit, looking taller and more graceful than usual, more high-bred too; for the girls whom Philip was in the habit of meeting did not generally indulge in such an expensive exercise as that of riding. He looked at her with a sort of spectator air, as though balancing her claims against those of the others. “I should not wonder,” he said, “if you would like your season at Farafield to be over altogether, and to be free to go back to your fine friends.”
“Why should you say my fine friends?” said Lucy, with gentle indignation; and then more softly, but also with a sigh, for she had been left for a long time without any news of one at least of them, whom she began to think her only real friend; “but indeed you are right, and I should be very glad to get back—all was so quiet there.”
“So quiet! If you are not quiet in Farafield where should you know tranquillity?” cried Philip, with a little mock laugh. He felt that she must intend this for a joke, and in his present temper it seemed to him a very bad joke.
Lucy looked at him with a momentary inquiry in her eyes—a question which had a great deal of wistfulness and anxiety in it. Could she tell her troubles to him? He was her kinsman—who so well qualified to advise her? But then she shook her head, and turned away from him with an impatient sigh.
“What is it you mean?” he said, with some excitement. His mind was in a turmoil, which he could not tell how to still. He felt himself at the mercy of his impulses, not knowing what he might be made to do in the next five minutes. It was the merest “toss-up” what he would do. Never had he felt himself so entirely irresponsible, so without independent meaning, so ready to be hurried in any direction. He did not feel in him the least spark of love for Lucy. He felt impatient with her, wroth with all the world for making so much of her, indignant that she should be preferred too—others. But with all that he did not know what he might find himself saying to her the next moment. The only thing was that it would not be his doing, it would be the force of the current of Fate, on which he felt himself whirling along—to be tossed over the rapids or dashed against the rocks, he did not know how or when. “What do you mean?” he repeated; “you look mysterious, as if you had something to tell—what is it? I have seen nothing of you the whole day. We have been nominally at the same party, and we are cousins, though you don’t seem to remember it much, and we once were friends; but I have scarcely seen you. You have been absorbed by other attractions, other companions.”
“Philip!” said Lucy, faltering and growing pale. Was he going to desert her, too?