Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/137

 provoked. “I will tell you what I think. I should wish to be ”

“ in your place!” he added langhingly. For a while he could not proceed on account of coughing. “So does every girl say before her twenty-fourth year.”

There was a moment of quiet. Lucy looked fixedly into his eyes, while a super-human and terrible power was working in her soul; then she asked him softly:

“Do you know who I am?”

“Lucy! Lucy!” the quavering voice of the old lady sounded through the woods. Lucy looked around her. A mist hung over her eyes. The old lady, the burgomistress, and the judge’s wife were hastening in her direction.

“Good-bye, good-bye,” whispered Lucy.

A look full of contempt reached the burgomistress from the dark eyes of the sick man.

“My child!” the old lady grasped both her hands.