Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/34

 (we are all moderns), felt that something was lacking, as he beheld that attitude of the fair girk. ’Tis true, he felt a sympathetic pity, but that sympathy was only hunger (do you know, my reader, that the sufferings and sorrows of others are soothing to our nerves?) and he was the more hungry, since she had permitted him to taste a piece of her suffering soul. He wanted to have all of her, he again asked for her past, and he asked it in a sympathetic and subdued voice, looking all the time earnestly into her eyes.

She spoke softly, in short, abrupt sentences.

Her father had been a teacher in a country town. Her mother had died young. Lucy grew up by herself, without guidance or surveillance. Her father began to dissipate. He played at cards through whole nights, drank, and gave himself up to debauches. She, in the meantime, at home, read anything that fell into her hands.