Lucy did not make any reply. It was not, perhaps, her brother’s wife she was thinking of. And when Arthur went away, Nancy became as if she had never existed to the family. They had Arthur’s letters as in the days when nothing lay between him and home; nothing but mere distance and absence--time and space, innocent obstacles which harm no one, though they are hard enough to put up with. And his wife, whom he ceased to speak of, fell into the background with his people. To be sure, when any young man in the county, or whom they knew, made a brilliant and satisfactory marriage, Lady Curtis and Lucy would look at each other with quick interchange of glances. And Sir John would come in, in the afternoon, and set his back against the mantel-piece, while he took his cup of tea, and say with a sigh, “They seem to be making a great fuss over young Seymour’s marriage.” “Yes,” Lady Curtis would answer with another sigh, “and no wonder--nothing could be more suitable.” They were almost angry with young Seymour for marrying as the heir to such a property ought to have married; and, probably, Lucy would launch some arrow at the new pair in sheer impatience of the praise thus accorded. “So suitable that it is unnecessary to think of love in the matter,” Lucy perhaps would say. And then Sir John would shrug his shoulders as he stood before the fire. “Love! that’s neither here nor there; if all the follies could be collected that have been done in the name of love!” And he would shake his grey old head, and again sigh, looking with eyes of admiration at Lucy as he went slowly back to his library, not able to get young Seymour and his fine marriage out of his head. Lady Curtis broke into a smile against her will as he went away. “You are not to think of any such folly, Lucy,” she said, “your father thinks that with your fortune you would be very happy unmarried. He says it is only poor people who need fear the fate of old maids. This is a great step for Sir John to take, who is such a Conservative.” “Are old maids against the Tory faith?” said Lucy, not sorry to have something to say. “Yes; it is the ancient creed that every woman should marry, and that it is only the ugly, the cross, and the unloveable that fail to attain that glorious end. What a stretch of principle this is for your father! _I_ do not go so far even with my advanced views.” Lady Curtis looked at her daughter curiously as she spoke. They spent their lives together, hour by hour and year by year. They had everything in common--when the post came in, they opened each other’s letters indiscriminately, the last depth of mutual confidence; read the same books, thought the same thoughts, were one in all the affairs of life; and yet in this most intimate affair of all, the mother looked at the daughter with unutterable yearnings of curiosity, not knowing what Lucy thought.