Her proceedings were by no means agreeable to her father or to Modbury.  The former wrote enjoining her by no means to leave the farmer’s house; but the letter came too late, for she had already taken her departure.  Modbury, however, in replying to an epistle in which Fennel had given him free consent to marry his daughter, expressed a thorough conviction of the firmness of the girl’s purpose, and that at present it was impossible to shake it.  Though she had left his roof he should continue to watch over her, and hoped, by persevering kindness and attention, eventually to win her affections.  Under these circumstances, Lucy quietly established herself in Mrs Damerel’s cottage.

At first she found it a hard matter to gain sufficient money for her labour to recompense the dame for her board and lodging, which she insisted upon doing every time she was paid by her employers.  Still she wrought on, although her savings were small, and at the end of several months they bore a hopeless proportion to the large sum which was required.  But time seemed a small object to her:  she looked forward to the end, and in it she saw such a world of reward and happiness, that no toil would be too much to arrive at it.  She had answered Luke’s letter with her own hand, assuring him of her unshaken attachment, in spite of all that had happened; but unfortunately he had sailed for India, and it was sent thither after him, in obedience to the vague ‘elsewhere’ which had been added to the superscription according to his wish.

Slow progress was not the only trouble Lucy had to contend with.  Modbury’s attentions pained her as much as Luke’s absence; the more so because they were so full of consideration for her welfare.  She knew she never could return his kindness, and felt that she did not deserve it.  She often told Dame Damerel that a show of hostility from the worthy farmer would not have pained her so much as his unremitting attentions.

Then, when the neighbours came in to gossip, they sometimes spoke against Luke.  They would tell her that a man who would suspect her on such slight grounds, and act as he did, could never be true to her; that he would see some other whom he would prefer, and some day send home word that he was married; neither was it likely that he would ever come home alive from the Indies.  These poisoned arrows, which were meant as comfort, glanced harmlessly from Lucy, who was invulnerably shielded by trusting love and hope.  She would answer:  ‘very likely,’ or ‘it may be,’ or ’there is no knowing what may happen in this world of trouble,’ and still rattle about her lace-pegs over the pillow on which it was made with the quickness of magic.  Amongst her visitors, however, there were two who invariably offered her better consolation; these were Larkin and his sister.  Tom ‘stuck up,’ as he expressed it, for his friend Luke, and always put the blame of the enlistment on the wiles and arts of the recruiting-sergeant, who regularly entrapped him into the deed.  Many a happy winter evening was spent in that humble cottage by Lucy and her friends.  Luke was never forgotten in their conversations; for there was the lace which was being unweariedly made for his release to remind them of him.  When Modbury made his appearance (and this was very often) the subject was of course dropped.