Thus, with work and play, and very much gossip, the summer days went by. The three girls found life full and pleasant, and Fanny had her little hour. [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XIV. LUCY. _Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her?_ TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. There was no mistaking the situation. At one of the red-legged tables sat Fred, his arms spread out before him, his face hidden in his arms; while Lucy, with a troubled face, stood near, struggling between her genuine compunction and an irrepressible desire to laugh. It was Sunday morning; the rest of the household were at church, and the two young people had had the studio to themselves without fear of disturbance; a circumstance of which the unfortunate Fred had hastened to avail himself, thereby rushing on his fate. They had now reached that stage of the proceedings when the rejected suitor, finding entreaty of no avail, has recourse to manifestations of despair and reproach. "You shouldn't have encouraged a fellow all these years," came hoarsely from between the arms and face of the prostrate swain. "'All these years!' how can you be so silly, Fred?" cried Lucy, with some asperity. "Why, I shall be accused next of encouraging little Jack Oakley, because I bowled his hoop round Regent's Park for him last week." Lucy did not mean to be unkind; but the really unexpected avowal from her old playmate had made her nervous; a refusal to treat it seriously seemed to her the best course to pursue. But her last words, as might have been supposed, were too much for poor Fred. Up he sprang, "a wounded thing with a rancorous cry"-- "There is another fellow!" Back started Lucy, as if she had been shot. The hot blood surged up into her face, the tears rose to her eyes. "What has that to do with it?" she cried, stung suddenly to cruelty; "what has that to do with it, when, if you were the only man in the world, I would not marry you?" Fred, hurt and shocked by this unexpected attack from gentle Lucy, gathered himself up with something more like dignity than he had displayed in the course of the interview. "Oh, very well," he said, taking up his hat; "perhaps one of these days you will be sorry for what you have done. I'm not much, I know, but you won't find many people to care for you as I would have cared." His voice broke suddenly, and he made his way rather blindly to the door. Lucy was trembling all over, and as pale as, a moment ago, she had been red. She wanted to say something, as she watched him fumbling unsteadily with the door-handle; but her lips refused to frame the words. Without lifting his head he passed into the little passage. Lucy heard his retreating footsteps, then her eye fell on a roll of newspapers at her feet. She picked them up hastily. "Fred," she cried, "you have forgotten these." But he vouchsafed no answer, and in another moment she heard the outer door shut.