be seduced
into any such confession of weakness.

"You are always having everybody in Carlingford to dinner," said the
young housekeeper, "and all the clergymen, even _that_ Mr Leeson; and
I don't see why you should except Mr Wentworth, papa; he has done
nothing wicked, so far as we know. I daresay he won't want to bring
Rosa Elsworthy with him; and why shouldn't he be asked here?" said
Lucy, looking full in his face with her bright eyes. Mr Wodehouse was
entirely discomfited, and did not know what to say. "I wonder if you
know what you mean yourselves, you women," he muttered; and then, with
a shrug of his shoulders, and a hasty "settle it as you please," the
churchwarden's boots creaked hastily out of the room, and out of the
house.

After this a dead silence fell upon the drawing-room and its two
occupants. They did not burst forth into mutual comment upon this last
piece of Carlingford news, as they would have done under any other
circumstances; on the contrary, they bent over their several occupations
with quite an unusual devotion, not exchanging so much as a look. Lucy,
over her needlework, was the steadiest of the two; she was still at the
same point in her thoughts, owning to herself that she was startled, and
indeed shocked, by what she had heard--that it was a great pity for Mr
Wentworth; perhaps that it was not quite what might have been expected
of him,--and then she checked herself, and went back again to her
original acknowledgment. To tell the truth, though she assured herself
that she had nothing to do with it, a strange sense of having just
passed through an unexpected illness, lay underneath Lucy's composure.
It was none of her business, to be sure, but she could not help feeling
as if she had just had a fever, or some other sudden unlooked-for
attack, and that nobody knew of it, and that she must get well as best
she could, without any help from without.

It was quite half an hour before Miss Wodehouse got up from the
knitting which she had spoiled utterly, trying to take up the dropped
stitches with her trembling fingers, and dropping others by every
effort she made. The poor lady went wistfully about the room,
wandering from corner to corner, as if in search of something; at last
she took courage to speak, when she found herself behind her young
sister. "Dear, I am sure it is not true," said Miss Wodehouse,
suddenly, with a little sob; and then she came close to Lucy's chair,
and put her hand t