“Talk of my kindness to you, Lucy, when you parted with every cent you had on earth to give me the gold you possessed, on my going to sea.  I am almost sorry you are now so much richer than myself, else would I certainly make you my heir.”

“We will not talk of money any longer in this sacred place,” Lucy answered tremulously.  “What I did as a foolish girl you will forget; we were but children then, Miles.”

So Lucy did not wish me to remember certain passages in our earlier youth!  Doubtless her present relations to Andrew Drewett rendered the recollection delicate, if not unpleasant.  I thought this less like herself than was her wont—­Lucy, who was usually so simple-minded, so affectionate, so frank and so true.  Nevertheless, love is an engrossing sentiment, as I could feel in my own case, and it might be that its jealous sensitiveness took the alarm at even that which was so innocent and sincere.  The effect of these considerations, added to that of Lucy’s remark, was to change the discourse, and we conversed long, in melancholy sadness, of her we had lost, for this life, altogether.

“We may live, ourselves, to grow old, Miles,” Lucy observed, “but never shall we cease to remember Grace as she was, and to love her memory, as we loved her dear self in life.  There has not been an hour since her death, that I have not seen her sitting at my side, and conversing in sisterly confidence, as we did from infancy to the day she ceased to live!”

As Lucy said this, she rose, drew her shawl around her, and held out her hand to take leave, for I had spoken of an intention to quit Clawbonny early in the morning.  The tears the dear girl shed might have been altogether owing to our previous conversation, or I might have had a share in producing them.  Lucy used to weep at parting from me, as well as Grace, and she was not a girl to change with the winds.  But I could not part thus:  I had a sort of feeling that when we parted this time, it would virtually be a final separation, as the wife of Andrew Drewett never could be exactly that which Lucy Hardinge had now been to me for near twenty years.

“I will not say farewell now, Lucy,” I observed.  “Should you not come to town before I sail, I will return to Clawbonny to take leave of you.  God only knows what will become of me, or whither I shall be led, and I could wish to defer the leave-takings to the last moment.  You and your excellent father must have my final adieus.”

Lucy returned the pressure of my hand, uttered a hasty good-night, and glided through the little gate of the rectory which by this time we had reached.  No doubt she fancied I returned immediately to my own house.  So far from this, however, I passed hours alone, in the church-yard, sometimes musing on the dead, and then with all my thoughts bent on the living.  I could see the light in Lucy’s window, and not till that was extinguished did I retire.  It was long past midnight.