Rickman till she had got Lucia safe at Hampstead.

"Besides," said Lucia simply, "I'm staying for the best of all
possible reasons; because I want to."

"Well, if it's pleasant for you, you forget that it's anything but
pleasant for Horace and me. Horace--if you care what he thinks--would
be exceedingly annoyed if he knew about it."

"Isn't he just a little unreasonable?"

"He is not. Is it nice for him to know that you prefer living with
these people to staying in his house?"

"What would he say if he knew that one of these people lent us this
room?"

The words and the smile that accompanied them challenged Edith to
speak; and speak she must. But she could not bring herself to utter
the abominable name. "And was that on Sophie's account or yours?"

"On both our accounts; and it was beautifully done."

"Oh, if it was done beautifully there's no doubt on whose account it
was done. I should have thought you were the last person, Lucia, to
put yourself under such an obligation."

"There was no obligation. It was kinder to Mr. Rickman to take his
room than refuse it, that was all."

Lucia had no difficulty whatever in bringing out the name. And that,
if Edith's perceptions had not been dulled by horror, would have
struck her as a favourable sign.

"Young Rickman!" Edith's astonishment was a master stroke in all that
it ignored and in all that it implied of the impossibility of that
person. "Your notions of kindness are more than I can understand.
Whatever possessed you to take his room? If he'd offered it fifty
times!"

"But it wasn't wanted."

Edith relaxed the tension of her indignant body and sank back in her
chair (or rather, Mr. Rickman's chair) with an immense relief. "You
mean he isn't in the house at present?"

"Oh yes, he's in the house, I'm glad to say. Neither Sophie nor I
could stand very much of the house without him."

That admission, instead of rousing Edith to renewed indignation,
appeared to crush her. "Lucia," she murmured, "you are hopeless."

Another cup of tea, however, revived the spirit of remonstrance.

"I know you don't see it, Lucia, but you are laying yourself under an
obligation of the worst sort; the sort that puts a woman more than
anything in a man's power."

Lucia ignored the baser implication (so like Lucia). "I'm under so
many obligations to Mr. Rickman already, that one more hardly counts."
She hastened to appease the dumb distress now visible on her cousin's
face