Lucille

“ And Lucille—the very accident that had happened to her on his behalf, only deepened the interest she had already conceived for one who, in the first flush of youth, was thus cut off from the glad objects of life, and led to a night of years, desolate and alone. There is, to your beautiful and kindly sex, a perpetual and gushing lovingness to protect. This makes them the angels of sickness, the comforters of age, the fosterers of childhood; and this feeling, in Lucille peculiarly developed, had already inexpressibly linked her compassionate nature to the lot of the unfortunate traveller. ”

“ Pansy looked at Lucille in her white satin and emeralds—Lucille, big and voluptuous, her profession written on her face.
"Who is that woman?" she demanded.
Lucille did not wait for Le Breton to answer.
One glance at him told her everything. On his face were concern, love, and annoyance; the look that comes to a man's face when the girl he would make his wife and the woman who is his mistress by some unfortunate circumstance chance to meet. ”

“ It was some time before Lucille could restore her to a quiet state of mind, but at length her sobs ceased and Lucille continued:
"The worst is now past, and if you will return to your brother and confess all, he will forgive you. When you are called upon to tell what you know about this wicked man, you must do so without reserve. You will never see him again except in prison. If you do as your brother wishes, you will regain your light heart and sweet disposition; your real husband will come back to you, and your future will be one of happiness." ”

“ She conceived a positive hatred to Lucille; she persisted in imagining that nothing but the accident of first acquaintance had deprived her of a conquest with which she persuaded herself her happiness had become connected. Had St. Amand never loved Lucille, and proposed to Julie, his misfortune would have made her reject him, despite his wealth and his youth; but to be Lucille's lover, and a conquest to be won from Lucille, raised him instantly to an importance not his own. Safe, however, in his affliction, the arts and beauty of Julie fell harmless on the fidelity of St. Amand. ”

“ Lucille had got a letter to him somehow. Lucille was not going to drop him yet—in spite of having seen him a red-handed, crop-haired, “quiff”-wearing, coarse-looking soldier.... Was there another woman in the world like Lucille? Would any other girl have so risen superior to her breeding, and the teachings of Miss Smellie, as to do what she thought right, regardless of public scandal...? But he must not give her the opportunity of being seen talking to a soldier again—much less kissing one. Not that she would want to kiss him again like that. ”

“ Lucille too, had a cousin named Julie, who was the wonder of all Malines for her personal perfections; and as the cousins were much together, the contrast was too striking not to occasion frequent mortification to Lucille. But every misfortune has something of a counterpoise; and the consciousness of personal inferiority, had meekened, without souring, her temper—had given gentleness to a spirit that otherwise might have been too high, and humility to a mind that was naturally strong, impassioned, and energetic. ”

“ Now out with it, or, warrant or no warrant, I’ll run you through as I would a dog.”
122“What of Lucille?” repeating my words in a sneering tone. Then changing suddenly: “This of Lucille. That I love her better than life. Aye, I love her more than I hate you, and God knows that hate is as wide and as deep as the sea. I love her; I love her, and she loves me! For Lucille de Guilfort is my wife!” ”

“ Ah, my poor daughter—my Lucille, my youngest lamb! Tell me, my Vevette, dost thou think I was ever unjust or unkind to her?"
"No, indeed!" I answered, with honest indignation, for my heart burned within me every time I thought of Lucille's cruel note of farewell. "Nobody ever had a better home or kinder friends. ”

“ He would have seen Lucille young and graceful, and with eyes beaming affection, contrasted only by the wrinkled countenance and bended frame of her parents, and she would have completed her conquest over him before he had discovered that she was less beautiful than others; nay more—that infidelity never could have lasted above the first few days, if the vain and heartless object of it had not exerted every art, all the power and witchery of her beauty, to cement and continue it. ”

“ Most men wished to make of love a nuisance, as Lucille once put it. So the good-looking professor had won the beauty. They were married on the mutual understanding that each should pursue their respective professions. Shortly afterwards Birnier was offered a special mission to go to Africa for the purpose of studying the customs and superstitions of the natives. Lucille had consented, forbidden, relented, and laughed.
So Lucille sang from musical height to height and her husband sped from depth to depth in the seas of human fatuity. ”

“ Marry! Not Lucille, while he had the sanity left to say “No”!
As for going to live at Monksmead with her and Auntie Yvette—it would be an even bigger crime. Was it for him to make Lucille a “problem” girl, a girl who was “talked about,” a by-word for those vile old women of both sexes whose favourite pastime is the invention and dissemination of lies where they dare, and of even more damaging head-shakes, lip-pursings, gasps and innuendoes where they do not? ”

“ Lucille clung in fright to me.
“Are all the men back away from the north wall?” I called to Carteret.
“Yes,” he shouted back.
“What is it, Edward?” sobbed Lucille.
“It is life or death,” I answered, as I ran with her into the block house.
The savages were yelling in chorus, like ten thousand devils now. The flames were beginning to take hold of the dry brush, which was crackling and snapping as if hungry to get at us. Inside the little fort were huddled all that was left of the defenders, men, women and children. I set Lucille down, but kept my arm about her. ”

“ I have said, dear Gertrude, that this story made a deep impression upon Lucille. A misfortune so nearly akin to that of St. Amand, removed by the prayer of another, filled her with devoted thoughts, and a beautiful hope. "Is not the tomb still standing?" thought she; "is not God still in heaven? He who heard the guilty, may he not hear the guiltless? Is he not the God of love? Are not the affections the offerings that please him best? and what though the child's mediator was his mother, can even a mother love her child more tenderly than I love Eugene? ”

“ They conversed on the future; they made plans; in the wide sterility of the world, they laid out the garden of household love, and filled it with flowers, forgetful of the wind that scatters and the frost that kills. And when, leaning on Lucille's arm, St. Amand sought his chamber, and they parted at his door, which closed upon her, she fell down on her knees at the threshold, and poured out the fulness of her heart in a prayer for his safety, and the fulfilment of her timid hope.
At daybreak she was consigned to the conveyance that performed the short journey from Malines to Bruxelles. ”

“ Why do you not run?”
“For Heaven’s sake, for mercy’s sake, he is blind!” cried Lucille, clinging to the stranger’s side.
“Save yourself, my kind guide!” said the stranger. But Lucille dreamed not of such desertion. The trooper wrested the horse’s head from the spot where they stood; with a snort, as it felt the spur, the enraged animal lashed out with its hind-legs; and Lucille, unable to save both, threw herself before the blind man, and received the shock directed against him; her slight and delicate arm fell broken by her side, the horseman was borne onward. “Thank God, you are saved!” ”

“ The stranger placed his hand on the young woman's arm, and though Lucille was naturally so bashful that even her mother would laughingly reproach her for the excess of a maiden virtue, she felt not the least pang of shame, as she found herself thus suddenly walking through the streets of Malines, alone with a young stranger, whose dress and air betokened him of a rank superior to her own. ”

“ I had the pleasant conviction that Lucille's health could, at all events, come to no harm from a residence in one of the oldest castles in France. No very lover-like reflections, the high-flown will cry. So be it. Each must love in his own way. "Air and water—air and water!" the Vicomte had cried when he saw the men at work under my directions. "You Englishmen are mad on the subject." ”

“ I shall have some money, though, when I am of age. When may I run away from Monksmead, darling?”
“Lucille,” groaned the miserable man. “Do you think that the sight of you in the mire in which I wallow would make me happier? Can’t you realize that I’m ruined and done—disgraced and smashed? Lucille, I am not sane at times.... The SNAKE ... Do you love me, Lucille? Then if so, I beg and implore you to forget me, to leave me alone, to wait awhile and then marry Delorme or some sane, wholesome man—who is neither a coward nor a lunatic nor an epileptic. Lucille, you double and treble my misery. ”

“ A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion—the genius loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a great dreary passage, through half a dozen waste and desolate chambers, and so at last into a room which had a few pieces of furniture at one end of it, and a log of wood smouldering and smoking on the hearth. ”

“ Lucille, however, wanted no help in the management of her life or the guidance of her heart, and made this clear to Madame. Indeed, she had of late begun to exercise somewhat of a sway over her mother, and appeared to be the ruling spirit; for youth is a force in itself. ”

“ O Roy, Roy!” she moaned. Lucille had hard work to bring any touch of comfort to her.
Hour after hour crept by. Once a messenger arrived with a pencil note from Colonel Baron to his wife—
“Do not sit up if we are late. We are doing what we can. I cannot persuade Denham to go back.”
Not sit up! Neither Mrs. Baron nor Lucille could dream of doing anything else. This suspense drew them together, and Lucille found herself to be one with the Barons in their trouble.
Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and at length eleven o’clock. ”

“ For a moment Lucille glanced at me, then I saw that she feared my mind was wandering again.
“Come into the house,” she said, soothingly, “’tis too chilling out here. Come in, and Master Graydon shall prescribe for you. Come, Edward.”
“Not Edward.”
“Well, then, Sir Francis Dane,” spoken as one might to a peevish child. “The strain has been too much for you, Ed--Sir Francis. Go and lie down, until you are recovered.”
I burst into a laugh, whereat Lucille seemed all the more frightened. I could not cease from laughing as I looked at her. ”

“ Perhaps nothing gives a better insight into the character of Lucille than this: her attempt to create a salon—of which she should be the star—in Riverbank. She soon found that the wit and wisdom of our small Iowa town was not willing to sit in a parlor and talk about Michael Angelo. The women were abashed before the culture they imagined Lucille to have. The men simply did not come. Not to be defeated, Lucille organized a “literary society.” By including only a few of her church acquaintances she gave the suggestion that the organization was “exclusive.” ”

“ Though three years of this life had served to transform the mannerless Amazon into a socially correct and fastidious young woman, the result, nevertheless, was a secret disappointment to her mother, who had hoped that Lucille would develop intellectual or æsthetic tastes under the influence of these many advantages. But what can a mother whose daughter prefers athletics to art, and fox terriers to philanthropy, do but make the best of it? Lucille had a will of her own and seemed to know exactly what she wished, which included marrying Clarence Waldo. ”

“ There are people who have acquired a hold upon Lucille so great that she is forced to obey their bidding. Lady Carey is one, the Duchess of Dorset is another. They are no friends of mine, and apparently Lucille has been taken away from me by them. ”

“ When I had finished everyone cheered, Whalley and Lady W . . . enthusiastically, and to my delight, Lucille as well.
After the rehearsal, everyone crowded about me: "Where did you learn?" "Who taught you?" At length Lucille came. "I knew you were someone", she said in her pretty way, "quelqu'un", "but it was extraordinary! You'll be a great actor, I'm sure." ”

“ She had been taught to laugh at sentiment, to regard admiration as valueless unless it came from a millionaire; to sneer at love unless it paced, richly clad and warmly shod, from a palace. She had graduated in the School of Fashion, and had passed with high honors. There was no more beautiful woman in all England than Lady Lucille; few possessed greater charm ”

“ Lucille has little time. There are others who wish to come. If Lucille uses too much power, the others have less. Oh, God is very good and kind! You poor people on earth do not know how good and kind He is because it is grey down there. ”