"Engaged to Lucy Harcourt? I never could have believed it. He's right
in saying that she is far more suitable for me than him." Thornton
exclaimed, dashing aside the letter and feeling conscious of a pang as
he remembered the bright, airy little beauty in whom he had once been
strongly interested, even if he did call her frivolous and ridicule
her childish ways.
She was frivolous, too much so, by far, to be a clergyman's wife, and
for a full half hour Thornton paced up and down the room, meditating
on Arthur's choice and wondering how upon earth it ever happened.