Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/42



"You shall know all to-morrow." .

and Lucy had both passed the day in that most uncomfortable state of each desiring to make her inward thoughts known to the other, and yet neither having the resolution to begin. Like all persons who have suffered much, there was something of languor about Francesca. She dreaded either feeling or inflicting pain; she shrunk from emotion; and though a dozen times, despite of her settled plan of non-interference, she resolved on speaking to her companion; yet, when the opportunity arrived, she involuntarily put it off till some other more favourable occasion, which never came. Lucy's was only a natural timidity, a girlish shame of owning that she had a lover. The ice once broken, she would have taken the usual pleasure in talking