fingers.

"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson," she said,
by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to
become Lady Audley."

She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's
wife looked up at her with surprise.

"You unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I think you are the last person
who ought to talk like that--you, such a bright, happy creature, that it
does every one good to see you. I'm sure I don't know what we shall do
if Sir Michael robs us of you."

After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy
never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's admiration
for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in the
surgeon's family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess would
quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have thought
it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an
offer.

So, one misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy
Graham, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an
opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from
the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the
governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was
something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to
her--half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the
choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would