Lugur did not call her, but he felt the omission keenly. It was the
first change; he knew that it prefigured many greater ones, and he was
for the hour stunned by the suddenness of the sorrow he had to face. But
Lugur had a stout heart, a heart made strong and sure by many sufferings
and by one love.
He sat motionless for an hour or more; his life was concentered in
thought, and thought does not always require physical movement. Indeed,
intense thought on any question is, as a rule, still and steady as a
rock. And Lugur was thinking of the one subject which was the prime
mover of his earthly life--thinking of his daughter and trying to
foresee the fate he had practically chosen for her, wondering if in
this matter he had been right or wrong. He had told himself that Lucy
must marry someone, and that Henry Hatton was the best of all her
suitors. Thirsk he hardly took into consideration; but there was young
Bradley and Squire Ashby and the Wesleyan minister, and his own
assistant in the school. He had seen that these men loved her, each in
his own way, but he liked none of them.
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