Mo7'e than Kin. 19
' In what way, ^larjy ? '
'He sent me back my letters and presrnts, and told me
that he should ever honour me as his friend and benefac¬
tress, but that Fate had willed that he was to fall in love
with a milliner's apprentice at Cambridge, and that Duty
impelled him to marry her. He is now rector of a parish in
the East Riding ; and that milliner's apprentice is on visit¬
ing terms with the county families,' concluded Miss Mar¬
jorum, as if this were the crowning wrong. ' So I think
you will admit that I soon discovered the hollowness of life,'
she added after a pause.
' It was very dishonourable of him,' said Lucille, wonder¬
ing whether the milliner's apprentice was pretty, and
wondering a little also what kind of a person dear old Mar¬
jorum was in her day of freshness and bloom. The good
creature belonged to that section of the elderly whom it is
q,lniost imj)ossible to imagine as ever having been young.
After luncheon Miss Marjorum again suggested the
Inferno; but Lucille was in no mood for serious study.
That idea of Bruno's return, added to her interest in her
"ng^ frotegee, completely filled her mind.
' It would be no use, Marjy dear,' she said; ' I should be
only pretending to understand. I'll practise this afternoon ;
and you and I will go for a long walk after five-o'clock tea.'
She went to her beloved piano, and played Mozart's
sonatas for the next two hours. It was music which she
knew well, and which allowed her thoughts and fancies to
wander fetterless.
Would he be much changed, this old companion of her
childhood, she wondered, as her fingers ran over the airy
passages of an allegro movement, in that close delicate
playing which is the result of much careful practice?
Would he despise the simple pleasures of Ingleshaw?—
the woods, the rural lanes, the meadows golden with butter¬
cups, and flushed here and there with ruddy patches of wild
sorrel; the hawthorn thickets where the thrushes sang so
divinely at eventide ; the village church, whose old-fashioned
homely services Lucille had attended all her life ? Would all
these things have lost their charm for him, now that he had
seen every great city of Europe, steeping himself in the
romance of a historical past, climbing Swiss mountains,
fishing in Norwegian lakes ?
' He used to be very fond of the country,' she told herself;
' but I am afraid it will all seem very small to him after the
wonders he has seen abroad.'
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