“All the more suitable,” Lady Curtis said, brightening visibly, “they are all heavy.” She had never liked Bertie so well. She told him the news in Arthur’s last letter, that he was liking Vienna very much, and happy in his new position; and wound up by an invitation to dinner. Lucy sat by and worked, and wondered, not without a smile about the corners of her mouth. She had no objection to her cousin, nor any alarm of him in her mind. He was “not the style she cared for,” she said to herself with a mocking echo of his speech; but that Lady Curtis, after her melancholy anticipation of the inevitable heirship of Bertie’s problematical son should be so easily mollified, amused her daughter. She let the conversation go on while she worked quietly, thinking her own thoughts. Lucy did not, perhaps, find the idea of remaining unmarried as attractive as her father did. She smiled at that too in her secret thoughts. Who is there that does not smile at it, being young? Why should there be anyone in the world who was not happy--who did not have all that the imagination desires, love and honour, and all the brightnesses and sympathy which love can give? Lucy had a private world to retire into at odd moments, a world so peopled that her fancy could not receive the idea of a lonely life. While her mother and Bertie talked, she had opened her secret door and gone in, entering into that vague sweet blessedness of dreams which is more than any vulgar reality of happiness. She heard their conversation, but it did not touch her. Her head was bent down a little over that work at which she was seldom so industrious, and even the smile was concealed that floated about her lips--that smile which was not for her family, much as she loved them. Lady Curtis had tried her best to lift the curtain, to look into that secret world of which she suspected the existence, but which she had no clue to, no thread to guide her through; but it did not occur to her to think of this at the moment when her daughter had escaped into it from her very side. “So Bertie is coming,” said Sir John. “Why, Bertie? Yes, to be sure, he is a relation, and has a claim; but I see no reason why you should ask him so often. It looks as if you meant to throw him in Lucy’s way.” “He will never be anything to Lucy,” said Lady Curtis, smiling. “That is all very well; but how do you know? Girls are not like anything else. They may hate a man one week and accept him the next. I’ve lived long enough to see that.” “You think they like to begin with a little aversion, as Mrs. Malaprop says--” “Eh? I don’t know anything about Mrs. Malaprop. I speak from my own observation. I would not put him in Lucy’s way.” “No one would be less likely to attract Lucy’s attention. Why, Bertie! he is no more equal to Lucy--”