Chapter 30 - Page 2

When she got upstairs to Elizabeth-Jane's room the latter
had taken off her out-door things, and was resting over a
book. Lucetta found in a moment that she had not yet learnt
the news.

"I did not come down to you, Miss Templeman," she said
simply. "I was coming to ask if you had quite recovered
from your fright, but I found you had a visitor. What are
the bells ringing for, I wonder? And the band, too, is
playing. Somebody must be married; or else they are
practising for Christmas."

Lucetta uttered a vague "Yes," and seating herself by the
other young woman looked musingly at her. "What a lonely
creature you are," she presently said; "never knowing what's
going on, or what people are talking about everywhere with
keen interest. You should get out, and gossip about as
other women do, and then you wouldn't be obliged to ask me a
question of that kind. Well, now, I have something to tell
you.

Elizabeth-Jane said she was so glad, and made herself
receptive.

"I must go rather a long way back," said Lucetta, the
difficulty of explaining herself satisfactorily to the
pondering one beside her growing more apparent at each
syllable. "You remember that trying case of conscience I
told you of some time ago--about the first lover and the
second lover?" She let out in jerky phrases a leading word
or two of the story she had told.

"O yes--I remember the story of YOUR FRIEND," said
Elizabeth drily, regarding the irises of Lucetta's eyes as
though to catch their exact shade. "The two lovers--the old
one and the new: how she wanted to marry the second, but
felt she ought to marry the first; so that she neglected the
better course to follow the evil, like the poet Ovid I've
just been construing: 'Video meliora proboque, deteriora
sequor.'"

"O no; she didn't follow evil exactly!" said Lucetta
hastily.

"But you said that she--or as I may say you"--answered
Elizabeth, dropping the mask, "were in honour and conscience
bound to marry the first?"

Lucetta's blush at being seen through came and went again
before she replied anxiously, "You will never breathe this,
will you, Elizabeth-Jane?"

"Certainly not, if you say not.

"Then I will tell you that the case is more complicated--
worse, in fact--than it seemed in my story. I and the first
man were thrown together in a strange way, and felt that we
ought to be united, as the world had talked of us. He was a
widower, as he supposed. He had not heard of his first wife
for many years. But the wife returned, and we parted. She
is now dead, and the husband comes paying me addresses
again, saying, 'Now we'll complete our purposes.' But,
Elizabeth-Jane, all this amounts