Miss Marjoribanks · Chapter 51 (3/3)

“Well, Lucilla, it is a great change,” said Mrs. Chiley, who could not reconcile herself to the new condition of affairs. “I don’t mean to pretend that I can make up my mind to it all at once. It seems so strange that you should have been setting your heart on someone all these ten years, and never saying a word; I wonder how you could do it. And when people were always in the hopes that you would marry at home, as it were, and settle in Carlingford. I am sure your poor dear papa would be as much astonished as anybody. And I suppose now he will take you away to Devonshire, where his mother lives, and we shall never see you any more.” And once more Mrs. Chiley gave a little sob. “The Firs would almost have been as good as Grange Lane,” she said, “and the Member for Carlingford, Lucilla!”

As for Miss Marjoribanks, she knelt down by the side of the sofa and took her old friend, as well as the blankets and pillows would permit, into her arms.

“Dear Mrs. Chiley, we are going to buy Marchbank and settle,” said Lucilla, weeping a little for company. “You could not think I would ever go far away from you. And as for being Member for Carlingford, there are Members for counties too,” Miss Marjoribanks said in her excitement. It was a revelation which came out unawares, and which she never intended to utter; but it threw a gleam of light over the new world of ambition and progress which was opened to Lucilla’s farseeing vision; and Mrs. Chiley could not but yield to the spell of mingled awe and sympathy which thrilled through her as she listened. It was not to be supposed that what Lucilla did was done upon mere unthinking impulse; and when she thought of Marchbank, there arose in Mrs. Chiley’s mind “the slow beginnings of content.”

“But, Lucilla,” the old lady said with solemnity, as she gave her a last kiss of reconciliation and peace, “if all Grange Lane had taken their oaths to it, I never could have believed, had you not told me, that, after all, it was to be Tom!”