“Poor Philip!” she said, shaking her head, and still moving her hand softly on his shoulder, with a little consolatory movement, calming him down. Then she added, with a smile, “You need not be in any trouble for that, for I am not going to give it to any—fellow. I never can by the will.”
“I don’t put any trust in that,” he said, “no one would put any trust in that. You will marry, of course, and then—it will be as Providence ordains, or your husband. He will take the command of it, and it will be his, whatever you may think now.”
“I do not think so,” said Lucy, with a smile, “and, besides, there is no such person. You need not trouble yourself about that.”
Then Philip wrung her hand again, looking up at her in such deadly earnest that it took from him all sense of honor. “Lucy, if I could have fallen in love with you, and you with me, that would have been the best thing of all,” he said.
“But you see it has not happened, Philip; it is not our fault.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, gloomily, with a sigh; “it is not my fault. I have tried my best; but things were too many for me.” Here he got up, shaking off unceremoniously Lucy’s hand. “Good-night! you must be damp in your habit, and I’ve got wet feet,” he said.
Mrs. Ford lay in wait for him as he came down-stairs, but he only said a hasty good-night to her as he went away. His feet were wet, and he realized the possibility of taking cold, which would be very awkward now that the duties of the school in Kent’s Lane had recommenced. Nevertheless, instead of going home, he crossed the road, and went stumbling among the mud toward the White House. What did he want there? he had a dim recollection of his umbrella, but it was not his umbrella he wanted. And Philip was fortunate, though, perhaps, he did not deserve it. A light flashed suddenly out from the White House as he reached the door. Bertie had taken his sister back, and had gone in, where he met but a poor reception. And Katie had come out to the door to see her brother depart. When she saw the other figure appearing in the gleam of light from the door, she gave a little shriek of mingled pleasure and malice. “It is Mr. Rainy come for his umbrella! Here it is!” she said, diving into the hall and reappearing with the article in question, all wet and shining. She held it out to him, with a laugh in which there was a good deal of excitement, for Katie had not been without her share in the agitations of the evening. “Here is your umbrella, Mr. Rainy. I was so glad to have it, and it is so good of you to save me the trouble of sending it back.” Philip stepped close up to the door, close to her as she stood on the threshold. “It was not for the umbrella I came,” he said as he took it from her. “I came only to look at the house you were in.” It was a strange place to make a declaration, with Bertie within hearing, the dark and humid night on one side, the blazing unsympathetic light of the hall on the other. But he was excited, too, and it seemed a necessity upon him to commit himself, to go beyond the region of prudence, the place from which he could draw back. Katie grew suddenly pale, then blushed crimson, and drew away from the door, with a wavering, hesitating consent. “That was not much worth the while,” she said, hurriedly. “Are you coming my way, Rainy?” said Bertie, who did not understand anything about it, and had his head full of other thoughts.
CHAPTER XLII.
WHAT THE LADIES SAID.
When Lucy awoke next morning a world of cares and troubles seemed to surround her bed. The previous day seemed nothing but a long imbroglio of discomforts, one after the other. First her interview with Mrs. Stone, then Raymond’s efforts to secure her attention, which she had not understood at the time, but which, as she looked back upon them, formed into a consistent pursuit of her which Lucy could not now believe herself to have been quite unconscious of. It seemed to her now that she had been hunted, and had managed to get away again and again, only to fall at last into the snare from which she finally escaped only with another hurt and wound. Poor Ray’s version of this would have been a very different one. He would have said that it was he who had been wounded and beaten, and that Lucy had remained mistress of the field. But that was not her own sensation. She had been hunted, and she had escaped, but with the loss of another friend, with the sense of having brought pain and disturbance to another set of people, who had been kind to her, and narrowed the world round about her. It seemed to Lucy, when she opened her eyes that morning, as if the skies were getting narrower and narrower, the circle of the universe closing in. It was becoming like the terrible prison in the story, which got less and less every day, till it crushed the unhappy inhabitant within. The White House first and now the Rushtons. Where was she to turn for safety?
When she went down-stairs she found Mrs. Ford much disposed to improve the occasion, and preach a sermon upon the discomforts of pleasure-seeking.