He even forgot himself so far as to reflect on the sanity of
the late Master of Lazarus, at which point Lucia had left him to his
reflections.
She had not yet forgiven Horace for his interference that day, nor for
his remark about the scandal and the Vandal. As for his other
observations, they were insufferably rue. Hence her desperate efforts
to set the library in order before she went abroad; hence the secrecy
and haste with which she had applied to Rickman's, without asking
Horace's advice as she naturally would have done; hence, too, her vast
delight at the success of her unassisted scheme. Mr. Rickman was
turning out splendidly. If she had looked all through London she could
not have found a better man.
CHAPTER XX
It was Easter Sunday and Lucia's heart was glad, for she had had a
letter from her father. There never was such a father and there never
were such letters as, once in a blue moon and when the fancy seized
him, he wrote to his adorable Lucy. Generally speaking they were all
about himself and his fiddle, the fiddle that when he was at home he
played from morning to night. But this letter was more exciting. It
was full of all the foolish and delightful things they were to do
together in Cannes, in Venice and in Florence and in Rome. He was
always in one or other of these places, but this was the first time he
had proposed that his adorable Lucy should join him. "You're too young
to see the world," he used to say.
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