"Travice, come to me for an instant," she said, taking his arm to pace the court-yard; "I have been hearing news at Peter Arkell's. Lucy's a sly girl; she might have told us, I think. She is engaged--but I don't know how long since. Perhaps only in these few days, since the funeral." "Engaged in what?" "To be married. She marries Tom Palmer." "It is not true," broke forth Travice. "Who in the world has been telling you that falsehood?" "Not true!" repeated Mrs. Arkell. "Why don't you say it is not true that I am talking to you--not true that this is Monday--not true that you are Travice Arkell? Upon my word! You are very polite, sir." "Who told it you?" reiterated Travice. "_They_ told me. Mildred Arkell told me. I have been sitting there for the last hour, and we have been talking that and other affairs over. I can tell you what, Travice--it will be an excellent match for Lucy; a far superior one to anything she could have expected--and they seem to know it." Even as she spoke, there shot a remembrance through Travice Arkell's heart, as an icebolt, of the night he had stood with Lucy in the chamber of her dying father, and her slighting words, in answer to his offer of a home: "I shall never have my home with you; nothing should induce me to it." She would not hear him; she told him he had no right so to speak to her. She had been singularly changed to him during the whole period of her father's illness; had shunned him by every means in her power; had been cold and distant when they were brought into contact. Before that, she was open and candid as the day. This fresh conduct had been altogether inexplicable to Travice, and he now asked himself whether it could have arisen from any engagement to marry Tom Palmer. If so, the change was in a degree accounted for; and it was certainly not impossible, if Tom Palmer had previously been wishing to woo her, that Mr. Peter Arkell, surprised by his dangerous illness, should have hurried matters to an engagement. The more Travice Arkell reflected on this phase of probabilities, the more he became impressed with it: he grew to look upon it as a certainty; he felt that all chance for himself with Lucy was over. Could he blame her? As things were with him and his father, he saw no chance of _his_ marrying her; and, in a worldly point of view, Lucy had done well--had done right. It's true he had never thought her worldly, and he had thought that she loved him; he believed that Tom Palmer had never been more to her than a wind that passes: but why should not Lucy have grown self-interested, as most other girls were? And to Travice it was pretty plain she had.