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290 Robarts could not help smiling. And, indeed, there was every now and then something even in Lucy's look that was almost comic. She acted the irony so well with which she strove to throw ridicule on herself! "Do laugh at me," she said. "Nothing on earth will do me so much good as that—nothing, unless it be starvation and a whip. If you would only tell me that I must be a sneak and an idiot to care for a man because he is good-looking and a lord!"

"But that has not been the reason. There is a great deal more in Lord Lufton than that; and, since I must speak, dear Lucy, I can not but say that I should not wonder at your being in love with him, only—only that—"

"Only what? Come, out with it. Do not mince matters, or think that I shall be angry with you because you scold me."

"Only that I should have thought that you would have been too guarded to have—have cared for any gentleman till—till he had shown that he cared for you."

"Guarded! Yes, that's it; that's just the word. But it's he that should have been guarded. He should have had a fire-guard hung before him—or a love-guard, if you will. Guarded! Was I not guarded, till you all would drag me out? Did I want to go there? And when I was there, did I not make a fool of myself, sitting in a corner, and thinking how much better placed I should have been down in the servants' hall. Lady Lufton—she dragged me out, and then cautioned me, and then, then—Why is Lady Lufton to have it all her own way? Why am I to be sacrificed for her? I did not want to know Lady Lufton, or any one belonging to her."

"I can not think that you have any cause to blame Lady Lufton, nor, perhaps, to blame any body very much."

"Well, no, it has been all my own fault; though, for the life of me, Fanny, going back and back, I can not see where I took the first false step. I do not know where I went wrong. One wrong thing I did, and it is the only thing that I do not regret."

"What was that, Lucy?"

"I told him a lie."

Mrs. Robarts was altogether in the dark, and feeling that she was so, she knew that she could not give counsel as a friend or a sister. Lucy had begun by declaring—so