When she got upstairs to Elizabeth-Jane's room the latter had taken off
her out-door things, and was resting over a book. Lucetta found in a
moment that she had not yet learnt the news.
"I did not come down to you, Miss Templeman," she said simply. "I was
coming to ask if you had quite recovered from your fright, but I found
you had a visitor. What are the bells ringing for, I wonder? And the
band, too, is playing. Somebody must be married; or else they are
practising for Christmas."
Lucetta uttered a vague "Yes," and seating herself by the other young
woman looked musingly at her. "What a lonely creature you are," she
presently said; "never knowing what's going on, or what people are
talking about everywhere with keen interest. You should get out, and
gossip about as other women do, and then you wouldn't be obliged to ask
me a question of that kind. Well, now, I have something to tell you."
Elizabeth-Jane said she was so glad, and made herself receptive.
"I must go rather a long way back," said Lucetta, the difficulty of
explaining herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her
growing more apparent at each syllable. "You remember that trying case
of conscience I told you of some time ago--about the first lover and the
second lover?" She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of the
story she had told.
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