saw a good deal of the
neighbouring gentry, connected with her by blood or long friendship, not
one of them divined her great anxiety. She felt vaguely that they knew
how things were going, but she held her head high and gave no one an
opportunity to pity her. Her father was now absent from home more
frequently and seemed to avoid being alone with her. They had never
discussed the state of their affairs, for he assumed with Lucy a
determined flippancy which prevented any serious conversation. On her
twenty-first birthday he had made some facetious observation about the
money of which she was now mistress, but had treated the matter with
such an airy charm that she had felt unable to proceed with it. Nor did
she wish to, for if he had spent her money nothing could be done, and it
was better not to know for certain. Notwithstanding settlements and
wills, she felt that it was really his to do what he liked with, and she
made up her mind that nothing in her behaviour should be construed as a
reproach.

At length the crash came.

She received a telegram one day--she was nearly twenty-three then--from
Richard Lomas, an old friend of her mother's, to say that he was coming
down for luncheon. She walked to the station to meet him. She was very
fond of him, not only for his own sake, but because her mother had been
fond of him, too; and the affection which had existed between them, drew
her nearer to the mother whom she felt now she had a little neglected.
Dick Lomas was a barrister, who, after contesting two seats
unsuccessfully, had got into Parliament at the last general election and
had made already a certain name for himself by the wittiness of his
speeches and the bluntness of his common sense. He had neither the
portentous gravity nor the dogmatic airs which afflicted most of his
legal colleagues in the house. He was a man who had solved the
difficulty of being sensible without tediousness and pointed without
impertinence. He was wise enough not to speak too often, and if only he
had not possessed a sense of humour--which his countrymen always regard
with suspicion in an English politician--he might have looked forward to
a brilliant future. He was a wiry little man, with a sharp,
good-humoured face and sparkling eyes. He carried his seven and thirty
years with gaiety.

But on this occasion he was unusually grave. Lucy, already surprised at
his sudden visit, divined at once from the uneasiness of his pleasant,
grey ey