"Well, dear?"
"I want you to stay while I tell Mark. He must not let Lord Lufton
come here to-morrow."
"Not let him!" said Mrs. Robarts. Mr. Robarts said nothing, but he
felt that his sister was rising in his esteem from minute to minute.
"No; Mark must bid him not come. He will not wish to pain me when it
can do no good. Look here, Mark;" and she walked over to her brother,
and put both her hands upon his arm. "I do love Lord Lufton. I had no
such meaning or thought when I first knew him. But I do love him--I
love him dearly;--almost as well as Fanny loves you, I suppose. You
may tell him so if you think proper--nay, you must tell him so, or he
will not understand me. But tell him this, as coming from me: that I
will never marry him, unless his mother asks me."
"She will not do that, I fear," said Mark, sorrowfully.
"No; I suppose not," said Lucy, now regaining all her courage.
"If I thought it probable that she should wish me to be her
daughter-in-law, it would not be necessary that I should make such a
stipulation. It is because she will not wish it; because she would
regard me as unfit to--to--to mate with her son. She would hate me,
and scorn me; and then he would begin to scorn me, and perhaps would
cease to love me.
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