her side of the family was now involved in debt and poverty and dishonour.  When the debts were paid off, and the poverty reduced and the honour redeemed, it would be time to re-consider the understanding.  But, as it was just possible that Horace, if not exactly fascinated by her debts and all the rest of it, might feel that these very things bound him, challenged him in some sort to protection, Lucia withdrew herself from the reach of the chivalrous delivering arm.  She took her stand, not quite outside the circle of the cousinly relation, but on the uttermost fringe and verge of it, where she entered more and more into her own possession.  They met; they wrote long letters to each other all about art and literature and philosophy, those ancient unimpassioned themes; for, if Lucia assumed nothing herself she allowed Horace to assume that whatever interested him must necessarily interest her.  In short, perceiving the horrible situation in which poor Horace had been left by that premature understanding, she did everything she could to help him out of it.

And she succeeded beyond her own or Horace’s expectation.

After three years’ hard work, when all the debts were paid, and she was independent, Lucia thought she might now trust herself to stay with Horace in his house at Hampstead.  She had stayed there already with Edith when Horace was away, but that was different.  And at first all was well; that is to say, there was no anxiety and no uncertainty.  The calm and successful critic of The Museion knew his own mind; and Lucia said to herself that she knew hers.  The understanding between them was perfect now.  They were simply first cousins; each was the other’s best friend; and they could never be anything else.  She stood very much nearer to the heart of the circle, in a place where it was warm and comfortable and safe.  If Horace could only have let her stay there, all would have been well still.  But a mature Lucia, a Lucia entirely self-possessed, calm and successful, too, in her lesser way; a Lucia without any drawbacks, and almost to his mind as uncertain as himself; a Lucia who might be carried off any day before his eyes by some one of the many brilliant young men whom it was impossible not to introduce to her, proved fatally disturbing to Horace Jewdwine.  And it was then that the anxiety and uncertainty began.

They were at their height in the sixth year, when Lucia broke down and came to Hampstead to recover.  Fate (not Lucia, of course; you could not think such things about Lucia) seemed anxious to precipitate matters, and Jewdwine in his soul abhorred precipitancy.  Edith, too, was secretly alarmed, and Lucia could read secrets.  But it was to avoid both a grossly pathetic appeal to the emotions and an appearance of collusion with the intrigues of Fate that Lucia had feigned recovery and betaken herself to Sophie in Tavistock Place, before, and (this was subtlety again), well before the return of Horace from his holiday.  And if the awful reflection visited her that this step might prove to be a more importunate appeal than any, to be a positive forcing of his hand, Edith had dissipated it by showing very plainly that the appeal was to their pride and not their pity.