The scene inside the cottage was painfully distressing.  The old dame was lying on a bed with her clothes still about her, showing that she had not gone to rest the whole night.  The village doctor was by her side, having just bled her, whilst everything strewed about the room indicated that the always revolting operation had but recently been performed.  The neighbours, as they crowded round the door, denounced Luke’s conduct as rash and heartless.  In the midst of their denunciations they were joined by another, to whom every word they uttered was as a death-wound.  It was Lucy.

Whoever has had the misfortune of often seeing women placed in sudden difficulties, or overtaken by an unforeseen misfortune, must have remarked that they occasionally act with unexpected firmness.  They frequently show a calmness of manner and a directness of purpose, forming quite an exception to their every-day demeanour.  It is after the danger is over, or the first crisis past, that they break down, as it were, and show themselves to belong to the weaker sex.  Thus it was with Lucy.  When she entered the cottage, she had a full knowledge of the death-blow which had been inflicted on her hopes of future happiness.  Still, she seemed calm and collected.  When she took the basin from the surgeon to bathe Mrs Damerel’s temples herself, her hand shook not, and she performed the kindly office as neatly as if no misfortune had befallen her.  When she went to the door to entreat the neighbours to stand away from it, that sufficient air might be admitted into the room, her voice, though rather deeper in tone than usual, was calm and firm.  Had she not occasionally pressed her hand tightly against her brow, as if to cool its burning agony, you would have thought that she suffered no further anxiety than that which is usually felt whilst attending the sick.

It was, however, when she was left alone with the exhausted, almost senseless mother, that the tide of grief took its full course.  Lucy wept like one distraught.  Through the deep, black future which lay before her, she could see no gleam of hope or sunlight.  She unjustly upbraided herself for having, however innocently, given Luke cause of suspicion.  The weight of blame which she took to herself was almost insupportable.  ‘I have been his ruin!’ she exclaimed, burying her face in his mother’s bosom.

When the old dame had strength to speak, she whispered Lucy not to give way, but to bear up against it.  The past, she wisely said, was incurable; ’We must keep our senses whole for the future.  While we keep heart, there is no fear of our seeing him again, yet.’

The story reached Farmer Modbury as he was sitting down to breakfast.  He was deeply shocked even when he? knew no more than that Luke had enlisted; but when, on visiting the cottage, the whole truth was explained to him by Lucy, he felt both grief and disappointment.  He was, however, determined not to abandon his suit as hopeless, and returning home, wrote to her father (he was a widower), explaining what had happened, and giving a frank exposition of his own honourable views as regarded Lucy. ’No doubt,’ he concluded his epistle, ‘she will soon forget this early and unhappy attachment.’  Modbury was a shrewd man, and a clever farmer, but he knew very little about women’s hearts.