"There is, then, some room for hope. If you were to resolve upon anything now, you would be doing so without knowing what you were doing, because you do not know what he is doing. It is just possible it may be a healthy shame that is keeping him away from you. It may become your duty to give him up, but I think when it is so, it will be clearly so. God gives us all time: we should give each other time, too. I wish I could see him." "I wish, indeed, you could, sir. It seems to me that he has not been well brought up. His father is a dreadfully hard and worldly man, as my poor grandmother knows too well; and his mother is very religious, but her religion seems to me to have done my poor Thomas more harm than his father's worldliness." "That is quite possible. When you do see him again, try to get him to come and see me. Or I will go and see him. I shall not overwhelm him with a torrent of religion which he cannot understand, and which would only harden him." "There is nothing I should wish more. But tell me one thing, Mr. Fuller: would it be right to marry him? I want to understand. Nothing looks farther off; but I want to know what is right." "I think," returned Mr. Fuller, "that every willing heart will be taught what is right by the time that action is necessary. One thing seems clear, that while you love him--" "I shall always love him," interrupted Lucy. [Illustration: "LUCY NEVER LIFTED HER EYES."] "I must speak generally," said Mr. Fuller; "and there have been a few instances," he added, with the glimmer of a smile through the seriousness of his countenance, "of young maidens, and young men no less, changing their minds about such matters. I do not say you will. But while you love him it is clear to me, that you must not accept the attentions of any one else. I could put a very hard and dreadful name upon that. There is another thing equally clear to me--that while he is unrepentant, that is, so long as he does not change his ways--turn from evil toward good--think better of it, that is--you would be doing very wrong to marry him. I do not say when, or that ever you are bound to stop loving him; but that is a very different thing from consenting to marry him. Any influence for good that a woman has over such a man, she may exercise as much before marriage as after it. Indeed, if the man is of a poor and selfish nature, she is almost certain, as far as my observation goes, to lose her influence after her marriage. Many a woman, I fear, has married a man with the hope of reforming him, and has found that she only afforded him opportunity for growth in wickedness. I do not say that no good at all comes of it, so long as she is good, but it is the wrong way, and evil comes of it."