as said it to Lady Richmond, Lucilla. He as good as said, as soon as the election was over-and now you have gone and got impatient, and thrown yourself away!" Miss Marjoribanks was quiet carried away for the moment by this flood of sorrowful eloquence. She was silenced, and had nothing to answer, and accepted it as in some respect the just penalty for the disappointment she was causing to everybody. She let Mrs Chiley say out her say, and then she restored the old lady to her sofa, and made her comfortable, and covered her up with all her wraps and blankets. Though she ran on in a feeble strain all the time weeping and lamenting, Lucilla took no notice. She wrapped her old friend up, and put her pillows just as she liked them, and sat down again on the low chair; and by that time the poor old lady had sunk into a faint sob of vexation and disappointment, and had given her remonstrances up. "Now, I will tell you all about it," said Miss Marjoribanks. "I knew you would be surprised; and if it would be any comfort to you, dear Mrs Chiley, to know that Mr Ashburton did--" "And you refused him, Lucilla?" Mrs Chiley asked, with horror in her face. "Ought I to have accepted him when there was somebody I liked better?" said Lucilla, with the force of conscious virtue, "and you used always to say just the contrary. One great thing that supported me was, that you would be sure to understand. I did not know it at the time," said Miss Marjoribanks, with sweet confidence and simplicity, "but I see it all now. Why it never came to anything before, you know, was, that I never could in my heart have accepted anybody but Tom." Mrs Chiley turned round with an unaffected surprise, which was not unmingled with awe. Up to this moment she had been under the impression that it was the blindness, and folly, and stupidity of the gentlemen which had kept it from ever coming to anything. It was altogether a new light that broke upon her now, confusing, though on the whole satisfactory; but for the moment she was struck dumb, and had no answer to make. "I never knew it myself until-quite lately," said Miss Marjoribanks, with confidential tenderness, “and I don't think I could tell it to any one but you. Dear Mrs Chiley, you have always taken such an interest in me! I sent him away, you know, and thought I was only fond of him because he was my cousin. And then there were all the others, and some of them were very nice; but always when it came to the point And it never came into my head that Tom was at the bottom of it all-never till the other day." Mrs Chiley was still so much confounded by this unexpected revelation that it was some time before she could find her voice; and even now the light penetrated slowly into her mind, and it was only by degrees that she accepted the new fact thus presented to her faith-that it was not the gentlemen who were to blame that it was all Lucilla's or rather Tom Marjoribanks's fault. "And Mr Ashburton, Lucilla ?" she asked, faintly. "I am very sorry," said Miss Marjoribanks, "very very sorry; but I don't think I can blame myself that I gave him encouragement, you know. I may have been foolish at other times, but I am sure I was very careful with him. It was all the election that was to blame. I spoke very frankly to him," Lucilla added, "for I knew he was a man to do me justice; and it will always be a comfort to me to think that we had our-our explanation, you know, before I knew it was Tom." "Well, Lucilla, it is a great change," said Mrs Chiley, who could not reconcile herself to the new condition of affairs. "I don't mean to pretend that I can make up my mind to it all at once. It seems so strange that you should have been setting your heart on some one all these ten years, and never saying a word; I wonder how you could do it. And when people were always in the hopes that you would marry at home, as it were, and settle in Carlingford. I am sure your poor dear papa would be as much astonished as anybody. And I suppose now he will take you away to Devonshire, where his mother lives, and we shall never see you any more." And once more Mrs Chiley gave a little sob. "The Firs would almost have been as good as Grange Lane," she said, " and the Member for Carlingford, Lucilla !" As for Miss Marjoribanks, she knelt down by the side of the sofa and took her old friend, as well as the blankets and pillows would permit, into her arms. "Dear Mrs Chiley, we are going to buy Marchbank and settle," said Lucilla, weeping a little for company. "You could not think I would ever go far away from you. And as for being Member for Carlingford, there are Members for counties too," Miss Marjoribanks said in her excitement. It was a revelation which came out unawares, and which she never intended to utter; but it threw a gleam of light over the new world of ambition and progress which was opened to Lucilla's far-seeing vision; and Mrs Chiley could not but yield to the spell of mingled awe and sympathy which thrilled through her as she listened. It was not to be supposed that what Lucilla did was done upon mere unthinking impulse; and when she thought of Marchbank, there arose in Mrs Chiley's mind "the slow beginnings of content." |