Quote 1
She led the way up the garden, Cecil following her, George last. She thought a disaster was averted. But when they entered the shrubbery it came. The book, as if it had not worked mischief enough, had been forgotten, and Cecil must go back for it; and George, who loved passionately, must blunder against her in the narrow path.
“No—” she gasped, and, for the second time, was kissed by him (15.134-5).
Love is inexorable. Despite the fact that Lucy is engaged, and Cecil is, like, right there, George can’t contain his passion – and he has no interest in containing it. He believes, unlike the other characters at this point, in being honest… and being honest means kissing Lucy. Again.
Quote 2
“[…] have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time—beautiful?"
"Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not beauty and delicacy the same?"
"So one would have thought," said [Lucy] helplessly. "But things are so difficult, I sometimes think" (1.99-101).
Here, Lucy shows us how different she is from the rest of the contented, conventional characters in the novel early on. Her subtle sense that there’s a difference between what’s polite (or “delicate”) and what’s actually right and good (or “beautiful”) is not one that jives with the social values and expectations of the day.
Quote 3
[…] the gates of liberty seemed still unopened. [Lucy] was conscious of her discontent; it was new to her to be conscious of it. "The world," she thought, "is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them" (4.6).
Wandering through the city alone, Lucy begins to realize that she’s not happy with life as she knows it. However, she’s obviously not sure how to go about breaking away from that life.