It was easy, now, to see the change which had come over Lucy's
position, in the attentions she received. All the ladies in the
principal boxes had nods and smiles for her and half the
fashionable-looking young men in the house crowded round her box, or
actually entered it to pay their compliments. I fancied Andrew Drewett
had a self-satisfied air that seemed to say, "you are paying your
homage indirectly to myself, in paying it to this young lady." As for
Lucy, my jealous watchfulness could not detect the smallest alteration
in her deportment, so far as simplicity and nature were concerned. She
appeared in a trifling degree more womanly, perhaps, than when I saw
her last, being now in her twentieth year; but the attentions she
received made no visible change in her manners. I had become lost in
the scene, and was standing in a musing attitude, my side face towards
the box, when I heard a suppressed exclamation, in Lucy's voice. I was
too near her to be mistaken, and it caused the blood to rush to my
heart in a torrent. Turning, I saw the dear girl, with her hand
extended over the front of the box, her face suffused with blushes,
and her eyes riveted on myself. I was recognised, and the surprise had
produced a display of all that old friendship, certainly, that had
once existed between us, in the simplicity and truth of childhood.
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