Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/317

Rh discourse and question me about Lucy's appearance. I did not then understand the meaning of her questions. Alas! how I look back to the hour passed every summer evening in that little shady porch, reading to that old blind woman, Lucy thanking me all the time, with her sweet blue eyes. I have rarely I fear me been so useful since, certainly never so beloved. It was not to last long; August was now beginning, and it came in with violent thunder storms. One of Lucy’s occupations was to gather wild strawberries in a wood at some distance, and nothing could exceed the natural taste with which she used to arrange the bright scarlet fruit amid the vine leaves she fetched from our garden. Returning over the common, she was caught in a tremendous shower, and wet through. The sudden chill struck to a constitution naturally delicate, and in four and twenty hours, Lucy was no more—I went to see her unconscious of what had happened. The house was shut up; I felt for the first time in my life that vague presentiment of evil which is its certain forerunner; I thought