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CHAPTER III.
"Tear follows tear, where long no tear hath been;
I see the present on a distant goal,
The past, revived, is present to my soul."
Blackie's Faust.
Francesca reached their home about half an hour before Lucy; but so occupied was she with her own agitated thoughts, that time passed without notice. Supper was the only meal which Lawrence Aylmer took with his daughter, when the business of the day was at end, and he had, as he would have termed it, "a right to enjoy himself." But he fell into the common mistake of putting enjoyment off over long; and night usually found him too thoroughly tired out with the day's fatigue to take more than the passive pleasure of silence and rest.
Francesca's abstraction was of such general occurrence that it could excite no particular attention. Lucy, from being afraid of her father, was always quiet; and Lawrence Aylmer went on with an occasional sentence touching the rumours of
