Would Lucy
begin this new life with the same deceit with which
she had begun the old? And if she did, would this
Frenchman forgive her when he learned the facts?
If he never learned them--and this was most to be
dreaded--what would Lucy's misery be all her life
if she still kept the secret close? Then with a pathos
all the more intense because of her ignorance of the
true situation--she fighting on alone, unconscious
that the man she loved not only knew every pulsation
of her aching heart, but would be as willing as
herself to guard its secret, she cried:
"Yes, at any cost she must be saved from this
living death! I know what it is to sit beside the man
I love, the man whose arm is ready to sustain me,
whose heart is bursting for love of me, and yet be
always held apart by a spectre which I dare not
face."
With this came the resolve to prevent the marriage
at all hazards, even to leaving Yardley and taking the
first steamer to Europe, that she might plead with
Lucy in person.
While she sat searching her brain for some way
out of the threatened calamity, the rapid rumbling
of the doctor's gig was heard on the gravel road outside
her open window.
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