"How did we do without it before--when you were
getting better from that long illness? We had to do without it then."
"I think not, Lucy. So far as _my_ memory serves me, you were sitting in
it a great portion of your time--cheering me. I have not forgotten it,
if you have."
Neither had she--by her heightened colour.
"I mean that we had to do without it for our own purposes, our drawings
and our work. It is but a little matter, after all. I wish we could do
more for you and Mrs. Verner. I wish," she added, her voice betraying
her emotion, "that we could have prevented your being turned from
Verner's Pride."
"Ay," he said, speaking with affected carelessness, and turning about an
ornament in his fingers, which he had taken from the mantel-piece, "it
is not an every-day calamity."
"What shall you do?" asked Lucy, going a little nearer to him, and
dropping her voice to a tone of confidence.
"Do? In what way, Lucy?"
"Shall you be content to live on here with Lady Verner? Not seeking to
retrieve your--your position in any way?"
"My living on here, Lucy, will be out of the question.
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