and there,
pausing even to say a word to a few favoured clients, was a wonderful
sight to the timid maiden lady at the corner of the street. Twenty years
ago some such companion might have been by Miss Wodehouse's side, but
never among the poor people in Prickett's Lane. Even with Lucy before
her she did not understand it. As the two came towards her, other
thoughts united with these in her kind soul. "I wonder whether anything
will ever come of it?" she said to herself, and with that wandered into
anxious reflections what this difference could be between Mr Wentworth
and his aunts: which cogitations, indeed, occupied her till the service
began, and perhaps disturbed her due appreciation of it; for if Lucy and
Mr Wentworth got attached, as seemed likely, and Mr Wentworth did not
get a living, what was to come of it? The thought made this
tender-hearted spectator sigh: perhaps she had some experience of her
own to enlighten her on such a point. At least it troubled, with
sympathetic human cares, the gentle soul which had lost the confidence
of youth.

As for the two most immediately concerned, they thought nothing at all
about aunts or livings. Whether it is the divine influence of youth,
or whether the vague unacknowledged love which makes two people happy
in each other's presence carries with it a certain inspiration, this
at least is certain, that there is an absolute warmth of devotion
arrived at in such moments, which many a soul, no longer happy, would
give all the world to reach. Such crowds and heaps of blessings fall
to these young souls! They said their prayers with all their hearts,
not aware of deriving anything of that profound sweet trust and
happiness from each other, but expanding over all the rude but
reverend worshippers around them, with an unlimited faith in their
improvement, almost in their perfection. This was what the wondering
looker-on, scarcely able to keep her anxieties out of her prayers,
could not understand, having forgotten, though she did not think so,
the exaltation of that time of youth, as people do. She thought it all
their goodness that they were able to put away their own thoughts; she
did not know it was in the very nature of those unexpressed emotions
to add the confidence of happiness to their prayers.

And after a while they all separated and went away back into the world
and the everyday hours. Young Wentworth and Lucy had not said a syllable
to each other, except about the p