to Framley while I was a boy, consulting with my mother about Mark and myself,—whether the Eton floggings were not more efficacious than those at Harrow. He was very kind to me, foreboding all manner of good things on my behalf."
"He was very kind to every one," said Lucy.
"I should think he would have been—a kind, good, genial man—just the man to be adored by his own family."
"Exactly; and so he was. I do not remember that I ever heard an unkind word from him. There was not a harsh tone in his voice. And he was generous as the day." Lucy, we have said, was not generally demonstrative, but now, on this subject, and with this absolute stranger, she became almost eloquent.
"I do not wonder that you should feel his loss, Miss Robarts."
"Oh, I do feel it. Mark is the best of brothers, and, as for Fanny, she is too kind and too good to me. But I had always been specially my father's friend. For the last year or two we had lived so much together!"
"He was an old man when he died, was he not?"
"Just seventy, my lord."
"Ah, then he was old. My mother is only fifty, and we sometimes call her the old woman. Do you think she looks older than that? We all say that she makes herself out to be so much more ancient than she need do."
"Lady Lufton does not dress young."
"That is it. She never has, in my memory. She always used to wear black when I first recollect her. She has given that up now; but she is still very sombre; is she not?"
"I do not like ladies to dress very young, that is, ladies of—of"
"Ladies of fifty, we will say?"
"Very well; ladies of fifty, if you like it."
"Then I am sure you will like my mother."
They had now turned up through the parsonage wicket, a little gate that opened into the garden at a point on the road nearer than the chief entrance.
"I suppose I shall find Mark up at the house?" said he.
"I daresay you will, my lord."
"Well, I'll go round this way, for my business is partly in the stable. You see I am quite at home here, though you never have seen me before. But, Miss Robarts, now that the ice is broken, I hope that we may be friends." He then put out his hand, and when she gave him hers he pressed it almost as an old friend might have done.
And, indeed, Lucy had talked to him almost as though he were an old friend. For a minute or two she had forgotten that he was a lord and a stranger—had forgotten also to be stiff and guarded as was her wont. Lord Lufton had spoken to her as though he had really cared to know her; and she, unconsciously, had been taken by the compliment. Lord Lufton, indeed, had not thought much about it—excepting as thus, that
