said, delighted to see those around her neat and pretty, jaunty and graceful.
"Dear Lady Lufton!" said Griselda, putting up her hand so as to press the end of her ladyship's fingers. It was the first piece of animation she had shown, and Lucy Robarts watched it all.
And then there was music. Lucy neither played nor sang; Fanny did both, and for an amateur did both well. Griselda did not sing, but she played; and did so in a manner that showed that neither her own labour nor her father's money had been spared in her instruction. Lord Lufton sang also, a little, and Captain Culpepper a very little; so that they got up a concert among them. In the meantime the doctor and Mark stood talking together on the rug before the fire; the two mothers sat contented, watching the billings and the cooings of their offspring—and Lucy sat alone, turning over the leaves of a book of pictures. She made up her mind fully, then and there, that she was quite unfitted by disposition for such work as this. She cared for no one, and no one cared for her. Well, she must go through with it now; but another time she would know better. With her own book and a fireside she never felt herself to be miserable as she was now.
She had turned her back to the music, for she was sick of seeing Lord Lufton watch the artistic motion of Miss Grantly's fingers, and was sitting at a small table as far away from the piano as a long room would permit, when she was suddenly roused from a reverie of self-reproach by a voice close behind her: "Miss Robarts," said the voice, "why have you cut us all?" and Lucy felt that though she heard the words plainly, nobody else did. Lord Lufton was now speaking to her as he had before spoken to Miss Grantly.
"I don't play, my lord," said Lucy, "nor yet sing."
"That would have made your company so much more valuable to us, for we are terribly badly off for listeners. Perhaps you don't like music?"
"I do like it,—sometimes very much."
"And when are the sometimes? But we shall find it all out in time. We shall have unravelled all your mysteries, and read all your riddles, by—when shall I say?—by the end of the winter. Shall we not?"
"I do not know that I have got any mysteries."
"Oh, but you have! It is very mysterious in you to come and sit here, with your back to us all"
"Oh, Lord Lufton; if I have done wrong!" and poor Lucy almost started from her chair, and a deep flush came across her dark cheek.
"No—no; you have done no wrong. I was only joking. It is we who have done wrong in leaving you to yourself—you who are the greatest stranger among us."
"I have been very well, thank you. I don't care about being left alone. I have always been used to it."
