Lady Audleys Secret | Page 5

know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish.
Of course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income,
and is one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very

high, and you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I
said before, you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only
one thing I must say, and that is that if Sir Michael's attentions are not
agreeable to you, it is really scarcely honorable to encourage him."
"His attentions--encourage him!" muttered Lucy, as if the words
bewildered her. "Pray, pray don't talk to me, Mrs. Dawson. I had no
idea of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me." She
leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her
hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply.
She wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a
cross, or a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket
was, she always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while
she sat silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her
face, and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a
half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward and forward between her
fingers.
"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson," she said,
by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to
become Lady Audley."
She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's wife
looked up at her with surprise.
"You unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I think you are the last
person who ought to talk like that--you, such a bright, happy creature,
that it does every one good to see you. I'm sure I don't know what we
shall do if Sir Michael robs us of you."
After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy
never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's
admiration for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in
the surgeon's family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess
would quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have
thought it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject
such an offer.

So, one misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy
Graham, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an
opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent
from the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He
made the governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand.
There was something almost touching in the manner and tone in which
he spoke to her--half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly
expect to be the choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that
she would reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than
that she should accept his offer if she did not love him.
"I scarcely think there is a greater sin, Lucy," he said, solemnly, "than
that of a woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so
precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and
bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, I would not have
you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. If my happiness
could be achieved by such an act, which it could not--which it never
could," he repeated, earnestly--"nothing but misery can result from a
marriage dictated by any motive but truth and love."
Lucy Graham was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the
misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The
baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he
could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so,
he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have
pierced the far obscurity and looked away--away into another world.
"Lucy, you heard me?"
"Yes," she said, gravely; not coldly, or in any way as if she were
offended at his words.
"And your answer?"
She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for
some moments was quite silent; then turning to him, with a sudden
passion in her manner, that lighted up her face with a new and
wonderful beauty which the baronet perceived even in the growing

twilight, she fell on her knees at his feet.
"No, Lucy; no, no!" he cried, vehemently, "not here, not here!"
"Yes, here, here," she said, the strange passion which agitated her
making