“Of course he must take his chance.  Well,—­I’ll get up now.”  And then she took her first step out into the cold world beyond her bed.  “We must all take our chance.  I have made up my mind that it will be at half-past eleven.”

When half-past eleven came, she was seated in a large easy chair over the drawing-room fire, with a little table by her side, on which a novel was lying.  She had not opened her book that morning, and had been sitting for some time perfectly silent, with her eyes closed, and her watch in her hand.

“Mamma,” she said at last, “it is over now, I’m sure.”

“What is over, my dear?”

“He has made that lady his wife.  I hope God will bless them, and I pray that they may be happy.”  As she spoke these words, there was an unwonted solemnity in her tone which startled Mrs Dale and Bell.

“I also will hope so,” said Mrs Dale.  “And now, Lily, will it not be well that you should turn your mind away from the subject, and endeavour to think of other things?”

“But I can’t, mamma.  It is so easy to say that; but people can’t choose their own thoughts.”

“They can usually direct them as they will, if they make the effort.”

“But I can’t make the effort.  Indeed, I don’t know why I should.  It seems natural to me to think about him, and I don’t suppose it can be very wrong.  When you have had so deep an interest in a person, you can’t drop him all of a sudden.”  Then there was again silence, and after a while Lily took up her novel.  She made that effort of which her mother had spoken, but she made it altogether in vain.  “I declare, Bell,” she said, “it’s the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read.”  This was specially ungrateful, because Bell had recommended the book.  “All the books have got to be so stupid!  I think I’ll read Pilgrim’s Progress again.”

“What do you say to Robinson Crusoe?” said Bell.

“Or Paul and Virginia?” said Lily.  “But I believe I’ll have Pilgrim’s Progress.  I never can understand it, but I rather think that makes it nicer.”

“I hate books I can’t understand,” said Bell.  “I like a book to be clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once.”

“The quick seeing of the meaning must depend a little on the reader, must it not?” said Mrs Dale.

“The reader mustn’t be a fool, of course,” said Bell.

“But then so many readers are fools,” said Lily.  “And yet they get something out of their reading.  Mrs Crump is always poring over the Revelations, and nearly knows them by heart.  I don’t think she could interpret a single image, but she has a hazy, misty idea of the truth.  That’s why she likes it,—­because it’s too beautiful to be understood; and that’s why I like Pilgrim’s Progress.”  After which Bell offered to get the book in question.

“No, not now,” said Lily.  “I’ll go on with this, as you say it’s so grand.  The personages are always in their tantrums, and go on as though they were mad.  Mamma, do you know where they’re going for the honeymoon?”