She went out, however, to face her small world, with what resolution she could muster, and was not a little glad that the dim light would save her looks from any close scrutiny.

Lady Dighton had been paying a long visit to Mrs. Costello, and the two perfectly understood each other. They both thought, also, that they understood what had occurred that morning, and why Lucia had a headache. Maurice had not made his appearance at his cousin's luncheon, as she expected, but that was not wonderful. Lady Dighton, however, had said to Mrs. Costello,

"It is quite extraordinary to me how Lucia can have seen Maurice's perfect devotion to her, and not perceived that it was more than brotherly."

Mrs. Costello did not feel bound to explain that Lucia's thoughts, as far as they had ever been occupied at all with love, had been drawn away in quite a different direction, so she contented herself with answering,

"She is very childish in some things, and she has been all her life accustomed to think of him as a brother. I knew he would have some difficulty at first in persuading her to think otherwise."

"He can't have failed?"

"I hope not. She has not told me anything, and therefore I do not suppose there is anything decisive to tell."

After their conversation the two naturally looked with interest for Lucia's coming. They heard her stirring, and exchanged a few more words,

"Perhaps we shall know now?"

"At any rate, Maurice will enlighten us when he arrives."

Lucia came in, gliding silently through the dim light. Her quiet movement was unconscious—she would have chosen to appear more, rather than less, animated than usual. Lady Dighton came forward to meet her.

"So you walked too far this morning?" she said. "I think it was a little too bad when you knew I was coming to see you to-day."

"I did not think I should be so tired," Lucia answered, and the friendly dusk hid her blush at her own disingenuousness.

"Are you quite rested, my child?" Mrs. Costello asked anxiously.

"Yes, mamma. My head aches a little still, but it will soon be better, I dare say. I am ashamed of being so lazy."

"Where is Maurice?" said Lady Dighton. "I expected to have found him here, as he did not come in for lunch."

"Has he not been with you then? He left me at the door, and said he would come back this evening."

"He has not been with me, certainly, though he promised to be. I thought you were answerable for his absence."

Lucia did not reply. Her heart beat fast, and the last words kept ringing in her ears, "you were answerable for his absence." Was she answerable for any doings of Maurice's? Had that morning's meeting, so strange and sudden for her, disturbed him too? She could only be silent and feel as if she had been accused, justly accused—but of what?

Meanwhile, her silence, which was not that of indifference, seemed to prove that the conjectures of the other two were right. They even ventured to exchange glances of intelligence, but Mrs. Costello hastened to fill up the break in the conversation.

"Is it true," she inquired of her visitor, "that you talk of going home next week?"

"Yes; we only came for a fortnight at the longest; and as the affair which brought us over seems to be happily progressing, there is no reason for delay."

"Oh! I am sorry," Lucia said impulsively. "Maurice goes with you, does not he?"

"Cela depend—he is not obliged to go just then, I suppose?"

"But surely he ought. We must make him go."

"And yet you would be sorry to lose him?"

"Of course; only—"

Another of those unexplained pauses! It was certainly a tantalizing state of affairs, though, in fact, this last one did but mean, "only he must be neglecting his affairs while he stops here." Lucia merely broke off because she felt as if Lady Dighton might think the words an impertinence.

Soon after this they parted. Something was said about to-morrow, but they finally left all arrangements to be made when Maurice should appear, which it was supposed he would do at dinner to the Dightons, and after it to the Costellos.

Dinner had been long over in the little apartment in the Champs Elysees when Maurice arrived there. The mother and daughter were sitting together as usual, but in unusual silence—Lucia absorbed in thought, Mrs. Costello watching and wondering, but still refraining from asking questions. Maurice came in, looking pale and tired. Lucia got up, and drew a chair for him near her mother. It was done with a double object; she wanted to express her grateful affection, and she wanted to manage so as to be herself out of his sight. He neither resisted her man[oe]uvre nor even saw it, but sat down wearily and began to reply to her mother's questions.

"I have been out of town. I had seen nothing of the country round Paris, so I thought I would make an excursion."

"An excursion all alone?"

"Yes; I have been to St. Denis."

"How did you go?"

"By rail. I started to come back by an omnibus I saw out there, but I did not much care about that mode of conveyance, so I got out and walked."

"Have you seen Lady Dighton?"

"I have seen no one. I am but just come back."

"Maurice! Have you not dined, then?"

"No. Never mind that. I will have some tea with you, please, by-and-by."

But Lucia had received a glance from her mother, and was gone already to try what Claudine's resources could produce. Mrs. Costello leaned forward, and laid her hand entreatingly on Maurice's arm,

"Tell me what all this means?" she said.

He tried to smile as he returned her look, but his eyes fell before the earnestness of hers.

"What what means?" he asked.

"Both you and Lucia know something I don't know," she answered. "I would rather question you than her. Has she troubled you?"

"Not in the way you think," he answered quickly. "I have partly changed my plans. I shall be obliged to go back to England with my cousin. Don't question Lucia, dear Mrs. Costello, let her be in peace for awhile."

"In peace? But she has been in peace—happy as the day was long, lately."

"She is disturbed now—yes, it is my fault—and I will do penance for it. You understand I do not give up my hopes—I only defer them."

"But, Maurice, I don't understand. You are neither changeable, nor likely to give Lucia any excuse for being foolish. Why should you go away? She exclaimed how sorry she was when your cousin spoke of it."

"Did she? But I am only a brother to her yet. Don't try to win more just now for me, lest she should give me less."

"Well, of course, you know your own affairs best. But it is totally incomprehensible to me."

Maurice leaned his head upon his hands. He had had a miserable day, and was feeling broken down and wretched. He spoke hopefully, but in his heart he doubted whether it would not be better to give Lucia up at once and altogether, only he had a strong suspicion that to give her up was not a thing within the power of his will.



CHAPTER XV.

The evening passed in constraint and embarrassment. Mrs. Costello was both puzzled and annoyed; Maurice, worn out in mind and body, and only resolute to shield Lucia at his own expense; Lucia herself more thoroughly uncomfortable than she had ever been in her life. She partly understood Maurice's conduct, but doubted its motives. Sometimes she thought he was influenced by his old dislike to Percy, and that even his kindness to herself was mixed with disapproval or contempt. Sometimes a suspicion of the truth, so faint and so unreasonable in her own eyes, that she would not acknowledge it for a moment, flashed across her mind; and this suspicion had its keenly humiliating as well as its comforting side. Besides the confusion of thoughts regarding these things, her mind was burdened with an entirely new trouble—the sense that she was concealing something from her mother; and this alone would have been quite sufficient to disturb and distress her.

So the three who had been so happy for the last few weeks sat together, with all their content destroyed. Maurice thought bitterly of the old Canadian days, which had been happy, too, and to which Percy's coming had brought trouble.

"It is the same thing over again," he said to himself; "but why such a fellow as that should be allowed to do so much mischief is a problem I can't solve. A tall idiot, who could not even care for her like a man!"

But he would not allow himself any hard thoughts of Lucia. Perhaps he had had some during his solitary day, but he had no real cause for them, and he was too loyal to find any consolation in blaming her. And it never would have come into his head to solace himself with the "having known me." He valued his own honest, unaltering love at a reasonable but not an excessive, price—himself at a very low one; and as Lucia understood nothing of the one, he did not wonder that she should slight the other. And yet he was very miserable.

Ten o'clock came at last, and he went away. After he was gone, Lucia came to her mother's knee, and sat down, resting her aching head against the arm of the chair. The old attitude, and the soft clinging touch, completely thawed the slight displeasure in Mrs. Costello's heart.

"Something is wrong, darling," she said. "If you do not want to tell me, or think you ought not, remember I do not ask any questions; but you have never had a secret from me."

Lucia raised her mother's hand, and laid it on her forehead.

"I ought to tell you, mamma," she said, "and I want to; but yet I don't like."

"Why?"

"You will be so angry; no, not that, perhaps, but you will be shocked, and yet I could not help it."

"Help what? Do you know, Lucia, that you are really trying me now?"

"Oh, mamma, no! I am not worth caring so much about."

"Have you and Maurice quarrelled?"

"Maurice! No, indeed. He is the best friend anybody ever had."

"What is it, then?"

"Mamma, do you remember what happened that first night at Cacouna?"

"What first night?" Mrs. Costello pressed her hand upon her heart, which began to beat painfully.

"The night when you told me about my father."

"Yes; I remember. Go on."

"And the next day?"

"Yes. Don't tell me that you still regret it."

"Mamma, I have seen him again."

"To-day?"

"To-day. At the chapel of St. Ferdinand."

"Did he know you? Did you speak to him?"

"No. He did not see us. He was thinking nothing of me."

"He ought not to think of you."

"Nor I of him. He is married."

"I knew that he either was, or was about to be."

"You have heard of him, then, since?" Lucia raised her head sharply, and looked at her mother.

"Mrs. Bellairs told me. They had heard it indirectly."

"If you had only told me!" Her head sank lower than before.

"My darling, I may have been mistaken. I have been so, many times; but I wished to avoid mentioning him to you. I hoped you were forgetting."

"Never; never for an hour," she said, half to herself. "No, mamma, for I thought he had not forgotten."

"But you sent him away yourself, my child. Remember, you would not even let me see him. He could not have supposed that you meant your answer to be anything but decisive."

"I did mean it to be decisive; but he refused to take it so. He said, 'Perhaps in a year;' and it is not a year yet."

Mrs. Costello listened in utter surprise. Lucia had much to say now. Broken words and sentences, which showed, by degrees, how her mind, as it recovered from the shock of other troubles, had gone back to dwell upon the hope of Percy's return, and which explained more fully why she had been so utterly blind to the schemes which were formed around her. In one point only she failed. She did not, with all her own faith in it, convey to her mother the impression of Percy's real earnestness in their last interview. That he had really loved her, she still believed; but she did not at all understand his shallow and easily-influenced character. Mrs. Costello, on the other hand, was predisposed to take the worst view, and to congratulate herself upon it, since it had helped to leave Lucia free. But not believing that the poor girl had been the object of a genuine, though transient passion, she for once was ready to judge her hardly, and to accuse her of having been wilfully and foolishly deceived.

There was a bitter pang to the mother's heart in thinking this; but the recollections of her own youth made the idea the less improbable to her, and made her also the gentler, even in her injustice. She said not a word of blame, but coaxed from her child the story of the meeting that morning, that she might find out how much Maurice had seen or heard of the truth. He understood all. Lucia said so frankly, though she blushed at the confession; he had not needed to be told, and he had been so good!

Mrs. Costello could have groaned aloud. It needed an effort to keep still, and not express the anger and impatience she felt. Maurice! Maurice, who was worth fifty Percys! Maurice, who was devoted heart and soul to this girl; who had been content to love her and wait for her, through good and evil fortune, through change and absence and silence, and, after all, she had no feeling for him but this heartless kind of gratitude! Because at the very last, when he had thought her certainly his own, he had endured, out of his great love, to see all his hopes swept away, and her grieving for his rival; therefore he had just so much claim upon her—"He was so good!"

There was little more said. When once Lucia had told her story, and when Mrs. Costello had discovered that Maurice understood all, neither of them cared to talk on the subject. They went to bed with a cloud between them, after all. Mrs. Costello kept her secret still, and pondered over the question whether there might yet possibly be hope, since Maurice had said he had only deferred his wishes, not relinquished them. Lucia was aware that her trouble was still her own exclusively—not shared by any one, even her mother. She thought of Percy—she longed to know how long he had thought of her—how, and why he had changed; and deep down in her heart there was a little disturbed wondering at Maurice's tenderness—that very tenderness which Mrs. Costello marvelled she did not see.

Maurice did not see his cousin that night. He went straight to his room, and without thinking, locked the door, put out the candles except one, and sat down in the gloom. His eyes and head ached—he felt weary and utterly dispirited. He had rushed away that morning after leaving Lucia at home, and found himself by the merest chance at St. Denis. He had got out there because his fellow-passengers did so, though at the railway station he had taken a ticket for a place much further on along the line. He had looked about the little town, and seen, in a blind blundering kind of way, the Cathedral. He had come out, with about half-a-dozen more visitors, and seeing an omnibus starting for Paris, had got into it, because it would take longer than the train—then after a while had got out again, because he could not bear the slow motion and perpetual babble of talk inside. But through all, and still more in his solitary walk, he had been thinking—thinking perpetually; and, after all, his thinking seemed yet to do. He would go back to England—that was necessary and right, whatever else might be. He was wanted there, as the pile of letters on his writing-table could testify. His father, too, was solitary at Hunsdon—and his business in Paris was over. But the Dightons would not go for some days, and he could not very well leave them after they had come over for his sake. He would have to stay, therefore, till they went; he would have to go on seeing the Costellos. He tried to fancy he was sorry for this, but the attempt was a very poor one. For a few days he would have to go on just as usual, and after that he would go home, and do what? That was just the question.

Ought he to go on hoping now? Had not he done all he could do? Was it probable that a girl who had loved another man—and that man, Percy—faithfully for a whole year on the mere possibility that he might have remained faithful to her, and who had been throughout blind and insensible to a regard deeper and purer than his had ever been, would be able to transfer her heart whole and undivided as he must have it if he had it at all? He dared not think it. "No, I have lost her at last!" he said to himself, "and she is the one only woman in the world."

Then he remembered, as if the reminder had been whispered in his ear, a promise he had made. It was one day during Mr. Beresford's illness, when his mind was a little clearer than usual. He had been trying feebly to return to his old interests, and speaking in his weak broken tones, about the future. He grew very tired after awhile, and Maurice persuaded him to try to sleep, but there was yet another thing to be said.

"You must marry soon, Maurice."

"I am young, sir, there is no hurry."

"No—only let it be soon."

"I must first find the lady."

"I thought I could have helped you—but it is too late." Maurice was silent.

"You will marry?" and the old man tried to raise himself in his earnestness.

"I hope to do so."

"Don't talk of hoping—it is a duty, positive duty."

"I mean to do so, then, grandfather."

"Say 'I will'—promise me."

"If I both hope and intend it, sir, is that not enough?"

"No, no. Promise."

"Well then, I promise."

The invalid was satisfied, and in a few minutes dropped asleep, and the conversation almost passed from his grandson's mind.

Now, however, he remembered it, as having bound him to something which might be a lifelong misery. He was young still; as he had said, there was time enough. But would any time make Lucia other than the first with him?

At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room, pushing first one, and then another article of furniture aside to make room for his walk.

"There is at least no further reason why she should not know all" he meditated. "Since my chance is gone, I cannot make matters worse by speaking, and it will be a relief to tell her." He paused, dwelling on the idea of his speaking and her listening—how differently from what he had thought of before—and then went on—"To-morrow is as good as any other time. To-morrow I will ask her to go out with me again—our last walk together."

He stopped again. At last he grew tired even of his own thoughts. He lighted his candles again, and sat down to write letters. First to his father, to say that he was coming home, to give him all the news, to speak just as usual of the Costellos—even specially of Lucia; then to his agent, and to other people, till the streets began to grow noisy and the candles to burn dim in the dawn.

Then he lay down, and fell into a deep, heavy sleep.



CHAPTER XVI.

Maurice was scarcely awake next morning when a little note was brought him from his cousin. It was only two or three lines written late the night before, when she found that he did not come to their common sitting-room. It said, "What has come to all the world? I go to Mrs. Costello's, and find Lucia with a violent headache, and with her ideas apparently much confused. I come home, and hear and see nothing of you till night, when I am told you have gone to your room without stopping for a moment to satisfy my curiosity. You will be at breakfast? I want to see you. LOUISA."

He twisted the dainty sheet of paper round his fingers, while he slowly recalled the events of yesterday up to the point of his last decision, to see Lucia to-day and tell her how grievously he had been disappointed, and what she had been and still was to him. But then came the natural consequence of this; he would still, afterwards, have to meet both Lucia and her mother constantly for some days, and to behave to them just as usual. It had seemed to him already that to do so would be difficult; now he began to think it impossible. What to do then? To keep silence now and always, or to speak and then go away home, where he was needed? He must lose her sweet company—sweet to him still. He must lose it, and what matter whether a few days sooner or later? It was better to see her once again, and go.

He dressed hastily and went to the breakfast-room. Sir John always took an early stroll, and might not yet be back; was not, in fact, and Lady Dighton was there alone. Maurice only saw so much before he began to speak.

"I am sorry," he said, "that you expected me last night. I came in very tired, and went straight to bed."

"We waited dinner some time for you," Lady Dighton answered, "and you know how punctual Sir John is; but never mind now. You are looking ill, Maurice."

"I am quite well. I am afraid I must go back to England though. Should you think me a barbarian if I started to-night and left you behind?"

"Is something wrong? Your father is well?"

"Quite well. But—I had letters last night. I am not certain that I must go, only I thought you ought to know at once that I might have to do so."

"And Lucia? What will she say?"

"I don't know. You will not tell her, please?"

"Certainly not. I do not like carrying bad news. But you will see her no doubt before I do."

Maurice hesitated a moment, and then made boldly a request which had been in his mind.

"I want to see her. I should like to see her this morning if I could. Will you help me?"

"You don't generally require help for that. But I suppose the fact is, you want to see her alone?"

"Exactly."

"I own I fancied you had settled your affairs yesterday; however, I can help you, I think. Mrs. Costello half promised to go out with me some morning. I will go and try to carry her off to-day."

"You are always kind, Louisa. What should I do without you?"

"Ah! that is very pretty just now. By-and-by we shall see how much value you have for me."

"Yes, you shall see."

"But seriously, Maurice, you look wretched. One would say you had not slept for a week."

"On the contrary, I slept later than usual to-day. It is that, I suppose, which makes me look dull. Here is Sir John. What time will your drive be?"

They fixed the time, and as soon as breakfast was finished, Maurice went back to his room. He tore up the letters he had written last night, and wrote others announcing his return home, took them to the post himself, and then walked about in sheer inability to keep still, until it should be time to go to Mrs. Costello's.

He made a tolerably long round, choosing always the noisiest, busiest streets, and came back to the hotel just as his cousin drove away. He followed her carriage, and passed it as it stood at Mrs. Costello's door, went on to the barrier, and coming back, found that it had disappeared. Now, therefore, probably Mrs. Costello was gone, and now, if ever, was his opportunity.

When Claudine opened the door for "ce beau monsieur" she was aghast. He was positively "beau" no longer. He was pale and heavy-eyed. He actually seemed to have grown thinner. Even his frank smile and word of wonderfully English French had failed him. She went back to her kitchen in consternation. "Ce pauvre monsieur! C'est affreux! Something is wrong with him and mademoiselle. Ma foi, if I had such a lover!"

Mrs. Costello was gone, and Lucia sat alone, and very dreary. At Maurice's entrance she rose quickly; but kept her eyes averted so that his paleness did not strike her as it had done others. She coloured vividly, with a mixture of shame, pride, and gladness, at his coming; but she only said "Good morning," in a low undemonstrative tone, and they both sat down in silence.

She had some little piece of work in her hands, but she did not go on with it, only kept twisting the thread round her fingers, and wondering what he would say; whether now that they were alone, he would refer to Percy; whether he would use his old privilege of blaming her when she did wrong.

But she was not struck down helplessly now as she had been at first yesterday. She had begun to feel the stings of mortified pride, and was ready to turn fiercely upon anybody who should give her provocation.

Maurice spoke first.

"I came to say good-bye," he said. "I am obliged to go home."

His words sounded curt and dry, just because he had such difficulty in making them steady at all, and she looked at him in her surprise, for the first time.

"Not to-day? Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter there. I told you I had business in Paris. Well, it is finished."

"And you are going to-day?"

"I start this evening."

"We shall miss you."

She felt a strange constraint creeping over her. She could not even express naturally her sorrow and disappointment at his going. She began again to have the feeling of being guilty, and accused, and being eager to defend herself without knowing how.

"I shall not be far off, and you will know where to find me. When you want me, for whatever reason, you have only to write and I will come."

"But I always want you," she answered half pettishly. "You said you would stay at least till Lady Dighton went away."

Maurice got up and walked to the window.

"I miscalculated," he said, coming back. "We all do sometimes, I suppose."

He stood in a favourite attitude, leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece, and watching Lucia with a mixture of love and bitterness. His last words seemed to her a taunt, and tears of anger filled her eyes. She remained silent, and he had to speak again.

"Do you care to know," he asked her, "what my business in Paris was?"

"If you wish to tell me!"

"Lucia! do not I wish to tell you everything? Could I have kept a secret which was always in my thoughts from you, do you suppose?"

Lucia half rose. "That is not generous," she said. "You have no right to speak so. Yesterday you were kinder."

"Yesterday I only thought of you. To-day I have had time to think a little of myself."

"No doubt you are right. Only you ought not to have come to Paris—at least not to us. It would have been better if everything that belonged to our old life had been lost together."

"Which means that you are quite willing to lose me?"

"Willing? No. But I can understand that it is better."

"Can you? You talk of losses—listen to what I have lost. You know what my life in Canada used to be—plenty of work, and not much money—but still reasonable hope of prosperity by-and-by. I used to make plans then, of having a home of my own, and I was not content that it should be just like other people's. I thought it would be the brightest, warmest, happiest home in the world. I knew it would be if I only got what I wanted. A man can't have a home without a wife. I knew where my wife was to be found if ever I had one at all; and she was so sweet and good, and let me see so frankly that she liked and trusted me, that I—it was all vanity, Lucia—I never much doubted that in time I should make her love me."

He stopped. Lucia was looking at him eagerly. Even yet she did not quite understand. "Go on," she said.

"There was my mistake," he continued. "I might have won her then perhaps. But there came a visitor to the neighbourhood. He was handsome—at least women said so—and could make himself agreeable. He knew all about what people call the world—he had plenty of talk about all sorts of small topics. He was a very fine gentleman in fact, and you know what I was. Well, naturally enough, he wanted amusement. He looked about for it, I suppose, and was attracted by what had attracted me—no—I do not believe even that, for I loved her goodness, and he must have been caught by her beauty. At any rate, I had to go away and leave him near her; and I heard after a while that he was gone. That was late in autumn. Very early this year, I heard of his marriage; and I thought she had been unharmed.

"My grandfather died, and I was rich enough to make that home I dreamed of, fit for its mistress. I went to find her. I found her, as I thought, lovelier and sweeter than ever. She seemed to feel more than ever that I was of some use and value to her—she made me believe that, next to her mother, she loved me best in the world. I delayed asking her to be my wife, only because our days were so happy, that I feared to disturb them—but I thought she was certainly mine.

"Then, all at once, this man, this Percy, who had left her in her trouble—who was married—made his appearance, and I knew that she had loved him all the while—that she had never cared for me!"

Long ago, Lucia had clasped her hands before her face. She sat trembling and cowering before this accuser. Involuntarily she said in her heart, "This is the true love. I have been blind—blind!"—but her words were frozen up—she bent forward as if under a blow—but made no sound.

Maurice himself remained silent for a few minutes. He had spoken under a strong impulse of excitement, he hardly knew how. He, too, leaned his head upon his hand, but from under it he still watched the trembling girlish figure, which was the dearest thing in the world to him. Presently he saw a tear steal out from between her small fingers and fall glittering upon the black dress she wore. He moved uneasily—he had been surely very harsh. Another tear fell—tear of bitter humiliation, good for her to shed—then a third. He could not endure it. She might not love him, but that was no reason why he should turn her sisterly affection into hate. So he went to her, and laid his hand softly on one of hers, trying to draw it away. She let him do so after a moment, but her face remained just as much hidden.

"Lucia!" he said, full of distress, "Lucia! speak to me."

She could not—all her efforts were needed to keep down the painful swelling in her throat. She was fighting for power to say humbly, "Try to forgive me," but he did not give her time.

"If you would only say good-bye—only one word;" and he almost knelt beside her, raising her cold hand half-unconsciously to his lips.

She drew it away suddenly. His tenderness was the worst reproach of all. Her sobs burst out without control. She rose. "No; rather forgive me," she tried to say, but her voice was choked and hardly audible; and she fled from the room, hurrying into her own, and fell down on the floor at the bedside.

Maurice waited for awhile, thinking she might come back. He sat down near where her chair stood, and leaning both elbows on the table, tried to calm himself after the terrible excitement. Lucia's tears and her silence had utterly disarmed him—he called himself a brute for having distressed her. But as time went on, and she did not return, he remembered that he could not just then meet Mrs. Costello, and he got up and began to walk about the room uneasily. Still, time went on, and there was no sign of Lucia. He wished to knock at her door, but dared not. He must go then without one good-bye!

"That is my own fault at any rate," he said, and went away softly, without even seeing Claudine.

But, as it happened, Mrs. Costello was long coming back. Lady Dighton had confided to her Maurice's wish to see Lucia alone, and the two ladies, very happy and confidential over their schemes, both supposing that nothing but good could come of a long talk between the young people—prolonged their absence till more than two hours after Maurice had returned to the hotel. So that his preparations for leaving Paris were almost completed by the time that Lucia, hearing her mother's entrance, came out of the solitude where she had hidden her tears and her repentance.



CHAPTER XVII.

Lucia tried to hide the traces of her tears, but the attempt was not particularly successful. Mrs. Costello saw at once that something was wrong; she asked whether Maurice had been there, and was told briefly yes, but she delayed any other questions for two reasons. One was, that merely saying that "Yes" had brought a quiver over Lucia's face, and the other, that she herself was tired and had got into a habit of dreading any kind of excitement. She felt a presentiment that there was nothing pleasant to hear, and at the same time was quite sure that whatever there was, her daughter would be unable to keep long from her.

She allowed Lucia to carry away her bonnet and shawl, and arrange her comfortably on the sofa for a rest. Then she began to describe her drive, and the shops at which Lady Dighton had been making various purchases. Lucia listened, and tried to be interested, and to lose the sense of shame and mortification mixed with real compunction, which was making her wretched. But her heart ached, and besides, she had cried, sitting all alone on her bedroom floor, till she was exhausted and half blind. All the while her mother talked, she kept thinking of Maurice—she neither called him "Poor Maurice," in her thoughts, nor "Dear Maurice"—but only "Maurice, Maurice," over and over again—her friend who was gone from her, whom she had justly lost.

But when she was growing more and more absorbed in her own regrets, and her mother's voice was beginning to sound to her like one in a dream, there came a sudden sharp ring at the door-bell. Could it be Maurice? She grew red as fire while she listened—but the door opened and shut, and there were no steps but Claudine's in the hall.

The maid came in. "A letter for madame, and a packet for mademoiselle,"—both directed by Maurice.

Lucia took hers to the window. She scarcely dared to open it, but she feared to appear to hesitate. Slowly she broke the seals, and found a tiny morocco case and a note. She hardly looked at the case, the note would be Maurice's farewell, and she did not know whether it would bring reproach or forgiveness with it. It was not long—even with her dazzled eyes, she was not more than a minute reading it.



"My dear old playfellow and pupil"—it began—"I cannot leave Paris without saying 'Good-bye,' and asking you to forgive me, not for what I said this morning, but for the way in which I said it. If you cannot love me (and I understand now that you cannot) it is not your fault; and I ought to have remembered that, even when it seemed hardest. I cannot stay here now; but you will recollect that if ever you want me—as a friend or brother, you know—a single line will be enough to bring me to your help. Finally, I beg of you, for the sake of old times, to wear the ring I send. I bought it for you—you ought to have no scruple in accepting a keepsake from your oldest friend, MAURICE LEIGH."



In the little box was the ring bought so long ago in Liverpool. It flashed, as if with the light of living eyes, as Lucia opened the lid. She regarded it for a moment almost with fear, then took it out and placed it on her finger—the third finger of her left hand. It fitted perfectly, and seemed to her like the embodiment of a watchful guardian who would keep her from wrong and from evil. She fancied this, though just then two or three drops fell heavily from her eyes, and one rested for a moment on the very diamonds themselves.

Mrs. Costello's note was longer than Lucia's, and she read it twice over, before she was sure that she comprehended it. Then she called sharply "Lucia!"

"Come here," she said, as the girl turned her face reluctantly; and there was nothing to do but to obey. Lucia came to the side of the sofa, where her mother had raised herself up against the cushions, but she trembled so, that to steady herself she dropped down on her knees on a footstool. Her right arm rested on the table, but the other hand, where the ring was, lay hidden in the folds of her dress.

"What does this mean, Lucia?" Mrs. Costello asked in a tone which she had never in her life used to her daughter before. "Are you out of your senses?"

Lucia was silent. She could almost have said yes.

"You know of course that Maurice is gone?"

"Yes I know it," she answered just audibly.

"Gone, and not likely to return?"

"He tells me so."

"What have you said to him?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! That is absurd. Why did he wish to see you alone to-day?"

"To tell me something," Lucia said with a little flash of opposition awakened by her mother's anger.

"Yes—I thought so. To tell you something which, to any girl in the world who was not inconceivably blind or inconceivably vain, would have been the best news she ever heard in her life. And you said nothing?"

"Mamma, it is over. I can't help it."

"So he says—he, who is not much in the habit of talking nonsense, says this to me. Just listen. 'We have both made the mistake of reasoning about a thing with which reason has nothing to do. I see the error now too late for myself, but not, I hope, too late to leave her in peace. Pray do not speak to her about it at all.' But it is my duty to speak."

"Mamma, Maurice is right. It is too late."

"It is not too late for him to get some little justice; and it is not too late for you to know what you have lost."

"Oh! I do know," she cried out. "But even if there had been no other reason, how could I have been different? He never told me till to-day." And she clasped her two hands together on the edge of the table and hid her face on them.

Mrs. Costello leaned a little more forward, and touched her daughter's arm.

"I must speak to you about this, Lucia," she said. "I do not want to be harsh, but you ought to know what you have done. And, good heavens! for what? A stranger, a mere coxcomb comes in your way, and you listen to his fine words, and straight begin to be able to see nothing but him, though the most faithful, generous heart a girl ever had offered to her is in your very hand! I was bad enough—but I had no such love as Maurice's to leave behind me."

Again Lucia moved, without speaking. As she did so, the ring on her hand flashed.

"What is that on your finger?" Mrs. Costello asked.

"Maurice's ring. He was not so hard on me."

"Hard?" Mrs. Costello was pressing her hand more and more tightly to her side. "Child, it is you that have been hard with your unconscious ways."

But Lucia had found power to speak at last.

"After all," she said obstinately, "I neither see why I should be supposed to have done wrong, nor why anybody else should be spoken of so. It is no harm, and no shame," she went on, raising her head, and showing her burning cheeks, "for a girl to like somebody who cares very much for her; and I think she would be a poor creature if she did not go on caring for him as long as she believed he was true to her."

The little spark of pride died out with the last words, and there was a faint quiver in her voice.

"Maurice would say so himself," she ended, triumphantly.

"Of course he would. But I don't see that Maurice would be a fair judge of the case. The question is, what does a girl deserve who has to choose between Maurice and Percy, and chooses Percy?"

Lucia recoiled. She could hardly yet bear to hear the name she had been dreaming over so long spoken in so harsh a way, and still less to hear it coupled in this way with Maurice's.

"Maurice will soon find somebody else," she said. "He is not a poor man, mamma, that he should mind so much."

Mrs. Costello half rose from the sofa. Pain and anger together overpowered her. She stood up for a moment, trying to speak, and then suddenly fell back, fainting.

Lucia sprang from her knees. Was her mother dead? It was possible, she knew. Had they parted for ever in anger? But the idea, from its very horror, did not affect her as a lighter fear might have done. She brought remedies, and called Claudine to help her, in a kind of calm. They tried all they could think of, and at last there came some feeble return of life. But the agitation and fatigue of the day had been too much for such strength as hers to rally from. One fainting fit succeeded another, with scarcely a moment's interval.

All evening it was the same. A doctor came, and stayed till the attacks ceased; but when he went away, his patient lay, white and almost unconscious even of Lucia's presence. It was terrible sitting there by the bedside, and watching for every slight movement—for the hope of a word or a smile. It was consolation unspeakable when, late at night, Mrs. Costello opened her eyes, free from the bewildered look of suffering, and, seeing her child's pale face beside her, put out her hand, and said softly, "My poor Lucia!"

After that she dropped asleep, and Lucia watched till early morning. It was the first of such watches she had ever kept, and the awful stillness made her tremble. Often she got up from her seat to see if her mother's breathing still really went on; it seemed difficult to believe that there was any stir whatever of life in the room. In those long hours, too, she had time to revert to the doings of the past day—to remember both Maurice's words and her mother's, and to separate, to some degree, the truth from all exaggeration. Her mind seemed to go back also, with singular clearness, to the time of Percy's coming to Cacouna, and even earlier. She began to comprehend the significance of trifles, which had seemed insignificant at the time, and to believe in the truth of what Maurice had told her, that even then he was building all his hopes on the possibility of her loving him. She wondered at herself now, as others had wondered at her; but she still justified herself: "He was my brother—my dearest friend. He," and this time she did not mean Maurice, "was the first person who ever put any other ideas into my head. And I have lost them both." But already the true love had so far gained its rights, that it was Maurice, far more than Percy, of whose loss she thought. Once that night, when she had sat quite without moving for a long time, and when her meditations had grown more and more dreary, she suddenly raised her hand, and her ring flashed out in the gloom. By some instinct she put it to her lips; it seemed to her a symbol of regard and protecting care, which comforted her strangely.

When the night was past, and Claudine came early in the morning to take Lucia's place, Mrs. Costello still slept; and the poor child, quite worn out—pale and shivering in the cold dawn—was glad to creep away to bed, and to her heavy but troubled slumber.

All that day the house was kept silent and shut up. Mrs. Costello had been much tried, the doctor thought, and needed a complete calm in which to recover herself. With her old habit of self-command she understood this, and remained still, almost without speaking, till some degree of strength should return. Lucia tended her with the most anxious care, and kept her troubled thoughts wholly to herself.

About two o'clock Lady Dighton came. Hearing that Mrs. Costello was ill, she begged to see Lucia, who came to her, looking weary and worn, but longing to hear of Maurice.

It seemed, however, as if she were not to be gratified. Lady Dighton was full of concern and kind offers of assistance, but she said nothing of her cousin until just as she went away. Then she did say, "You know that Maurice left us yesterday evening? I miss him dreadfully; but I dare say he thinks much more of whether other people miss him."

She went, and they were alone again. So alone, as they had never been while Maurice was in Paris, when he might come in at any moment and bring a cheerful breath from the outer world into their narrow and feminine life,—as he would never come again! 'Oh,' Lucia thought, 'why could not he be our friend always—just our own Maurice as he used to be—and not have these miserable fancies? We might have been so happy!'

Towards night Mrs. Costello had greatly revived. She was able to sit up a little, and to talk much as usual. She did not allude at all to her last conversation with her daughter, and Lucia herself dared not renew so exciting a subject. But all anger seemed to have entirely passed away from between them. They were completely restored to their old natural confidence and tenderness; and that was a comfort which Lucia's terror of last night made exquisitely sweet to her.



CHAPTER XVIII.

Two or three days passed before its former tranquillity was restored to the apartment in the Champs Elysees. Its "former tranquillity," indeed, did not seem to come back at all. There were new elements of discomfort and disturbance at work, even more than in the days before Maurice came, and when Mrs. Costello both feared and hoped for his coming. He was never mentioned now, except during Lady Dighton's daily visit. She, much mystified, and not sure whether Lucia was to be pitied or blamed, was too kind-hearted not to sympathize with her anxiety for her mother, and she therefore came constantly—first to inquire for, and then to sit with Mrs. Costello, insisting that Lucia should take that opportunity of going out in her carriage.

These drives gave the poor child not only fresh air, but also a short interval each day in which she could be natural, and permit herself the indulgence of the depression which had taken possession of her. She felt certain that her mother, though she treated her with her usual tenderness, still felt surprised and disappointed by her conduct. Maurice also, who had been always so patient, so indulgent, had gone away in trouble through her; he had reproached her, perhaps justly, and had given up for ever their old intimacy. She was growing more and more miserable. If ever, for a moment, she forgot her burden, some little incident was sure to occur which brought naturally to her lips the words, 'I wish Maurice were here;' and she would turn sick with the thought, 'He never will be here again, and it is my fault.'

So the days went on till the Dightons left Paris. They did so without any clear understanding having reached Lady Dighton's mind of the state of affairs between Maurice and Lucia. All she actually knew was that Maurice had been obliged to go home unexpectedly, and that ever since he went Lucia had looked like a ghost. And as this conjunction of circumstances did not appear unfavourable to her cousin's wishes, and as she had no hint of those wishes having been given up, she was quite disposed to continue to regard Lucia as the future mistress of Hunsdon.

However, she was not sorry to leave Paris. Her visit there, with regard to its principal object, had been rather unsatisfactory; at all events it had had no visible results, and she liked results. She wanted to go home and see how Maurice reigned at Hunsdon, and tell her particular friends about the beautiful girl she hoped some day to have the pleasure of patronizing.

Mrs. Costello had regained nearly her usual health. One day, shortly after the Dightons left, she asked Lucia to bring her desk, saying that she must write to Mr. Wynter, and that it was time they should make some different arrangement, since, as they had long ago agreed, Paris was too expensive for them to stay there all the year.

Lucia remembered what Maurice had said to her about her mother returning to England, but the consciousness of what had really been in his mind at the moment stopped her just as she was about to speak. She brought the desk, and said only,

"Have you thought of any place, mamma?"

"I have thought of two or three, but none please me," Mrs. Costello answered. "We want a cheap place—one within easy reach of England, and one not too much visited by tourists. It is not very easy to find a place with all the requisites."

"No, indeed. But you are not able to travel yet."

"Yes I am. Indeed, it is necessary we should go soon, if not immediately."

Lucia sighed. She would be sorry to leave Paris. Meantime her mother had opened the desk, but before beginning to write she took out a small packet of letters, and handed them to Lucia. "I will give these to you," she said, "for you have the greatest concern with them, though they were not meant for your eyes."

Lucia looked at the packet and recognized Maurice's hand.

"Ought I to read them, then?" she said.

"Certainly. Nay, I desire that you will read them carefully. Yes, Lucia," she went on in a softer tone, "I wish you to know all that has been hidden from you. Take those notes and keep them. When you are an old woman you may be glad to remember that they were ever written."

Lucia could not answer. She carried the packet away to her own chair, and sitting down, opened it and began to read. It was only Maurice's notes, written to Mrs. Costello from England, and they were many of them very hasty, impetuous, and not particularly well-expressed missives. But if they had been eloquence itself, they could not have stirred the reader's heart as they did. It was the simple bare fact of a great love—so much greater than she could ever have deserved, and yet passed by, disregarded, unperceived in her arrogant ignorance; this was what she seemed to see in them, and it wrung her heart with vain repentance and regret. And, as she bent over them there suddenly arose in her mind a doubt—a question which seemed to have very little to do with those letters, yet which they certainly helped to raise—had she ever loved Percy? Lucia was romantic. Like other romantic girls, she would formerly have said—indeed, she had said to herself many times—"I shall love him all my life—even if he forgets me I shall still love him." And yet now she was conscious—dimly, unwillingly conscious, that she thought very little of him, and that even that little was not at all in the strain she would have felt to be proper in a deserted heroine of fiction. She was not the least likely to die of a broken heart for him; she was much more inclined to die for grief and shame at what had befallen Maurice. So that question, which was in itself a mortifying one, rose rebelliously in her mind—had she ever loved Percy? or had she been wasting her thoughts on a mere lay-figure, dressed up by her own fancy in attributes not at all belonging to it? Poor child! had she known how many women—and perhaps men also—do the very same, the idea might not have seemed quite so horrible to her.

Horrible or not, she put it aside and went back to the letters. In the earlier ones there were many allusions which seemed almost to belong to a former existence, so utterly had her life changed since they were written. The bright days of last summer, before the first cloud came over her fortunes, seemed to return almost too vividly to her memory; she would have bargained away a year of her life to be able to regain the simple happiness of that time. It could never be done; she had suffered, and had done some good and much evil; the past was ended and put away for ever; she could not, for all she might give, again set herself

"To the same key Of the remembered harmony."

She closed the last letter of the little pile and put them carefully away. Already they seemed to her one of her most valuable possessions.

Mrs. Costello had finished writing to her cousin. She was busy with Murray and a map of France; and when Lucia came back she called her.

"Come here, I have half decided."

"Yes, mamma. Where is it?"

"Of course, I cannot be sure. I must make some inquiries; but I think this will do—Bourg-Cailloux."

Lucia looked where her mother's finger pointed on the map.

"Is it a seaport?" she asked.

"Yes, with steamers sailing direct to England."

"But in that case, will it not be in the way of tourists?"

"I suspect not; I have looked what Murray says, and it is so little that it is pretty evident it is not much visited by the people who follow his guidance. Besides, I do not see what attraction the place can have except just the sea. It is an old fortified town, with a market and considerable maritime trade—sends supplies of various kinds to London, and has handsome docks; from all which I conclude that business, and not pleasure, is the thing which takes people there."

"Could you bear a noisy, busy town?"

"After this I do not think we need fear the noise of any provincial town. In a very quiet place we should not have the direct communication with England, which is an object with me."

"But, mamma, what need——?"

"Every need, for your sake as well as my own. We must be where, in case of emergency, you could quickly have help from England."

Lucia trembled at her mother's words. She dared not disregard them after what had lately happened, but she could not discuss this aspect of the question.

"I must find out about the journey," Mrs. Costello went on. "If it is not a very fatiguing one I believe I shall decide at once. We shall both be the better, in any case, for a little sea air."

"I shall like it at all events. I have never seen the sea except during our voyage."

"No. I used to be very fond of it. I believe now, if I could get out to sit on the beach I should grow much stronger."

"Oh, mamma, you must. What is the name of the place? Here it is—Bourg-Cailloux. When do you think we can go?"

"Not before next week, certainly. Do not make up your mind to that place, for perhaps it may not suit us yet to go there."

Lucia knelt down, and put her arms softly round her mother's waist.

"Dear mother," she said slowly, "I wish you would go back to England."

Mrs. Costello started. "To England?" she said, "you know quite well that it is impossible."

"You would be glad to go, mamma."

"Child, you do not know how glad I should be. To die and be buried among my own people!"

"To go and live among them rather, mamma; Maurice put it into my head that you might."

She spoke the last sentence timidly; after they had both so avoided Maurice's name, she half dreaded its effect on her mother. But Mrs. Costello only shook her head sadly.

"Maurice thought of a different return from any that would be possible now. Possibly, if all had been as we wished—both he and I—I might have gone over to a part of England so far from the place I left. Say no more of it, dear," she added quickly, "let us make the best of what we have, and try to forget what we have not."

She bent down and kissed her daughter as she spoke. But still these last few sentences had furnished a little fresh bitterness for Lucia's thoughts. Her mother's exile might have ended but for her.

Bourg-Cailloux was next day fully decided on for their new residence. From the time of the decision Lucia began to be very busy in preparation for their journey, and for leaving the place where she had been too happy, and too miserable, not to have become attached to it. Claudine, too, had to be left behind with some regret, but they hoped to see Paris again the following year if all should be well. Early one morning they started off once again, a somewhat forlorn pair of travellers, and at three o'clock on a bright afternoon rattled over the rough pavements, on their way to the Hotel des Bains at Bourg-Cailloux.



CHAPTER XIX.

Summer came very early that year, and the narrow streets of Bourg-Cailloux were full of the glare and heat of the season. The pavements of white stones, always rough and painful to the feet, were burning hot in the middle of the day, and outside the walls, especially towards the sea, the light coloured, sandy roads were more scorching still. The Hotel des Bains, just waking up after its winter repose, had proved but a comfortless dwelling. After two or three days, therefore, Mrs. Costello had left it, and she and Lucia were now settled in a lodging in the city itself. Their windows looked out on the "Place," where a brave sea-captain, the hero of Bourg-Cailloux, stood in effigy, and still seemed to keep watch over the place he had once defended, and where, twice a week, the market-women came in their long black cloaks and dazzling caps, and brought heaps of fragrant flowers and early fruit. In the very early morning, the shadow of a quaint old tower fell transversely upon the pavement of the square, and reached almost to their door; and in the evening Lucia grew fond of watching for the fire which was nightly lighted on the same tower that it might be a guide to sailors far out at sea. The town was quiet and dull—there was no theatre, no concerts, at present even no balls—the only public amusement of the population seemed to be listening in the still evenings to the band which played in front of the guard-house in the Place. There they came in throngs, and promenaded slowly over the sharp-edged stones, with a keen and visible enjoyment of the fresh air, the music, and each other's company, which was in itself a pleasant thing to see.

The journey, the discomforts of the first few days, and the second moving, had tried Mrs. Costello extremely. She spent most of her time on the sofa now, and had as yet only been able once or twice to go down and sit for a while on the sunny beach, where children were playing and building sand castles, and where the sea breeze was sweet and reviving.

There was a small colony of English people settled in the town, mostly people with small incomes and many children, or widows of poor gentlemen; but there was also a large floating population of English sailors, and for their benefit an English consul and chaplain, who supplied a temporal and spiritual leader to the community. But the mother and daughter kept much apart from their country people, who were inclined to be sociable and friendly towards them. Mrs. Costello's illness, and Lucia's preoccupation, made them receive with indifference the visits of those who, after seeing them at the little English church, and by the sea, thought it "only neighbourly to call."

Their home arrangements were different to those they had made in Paris. Here they were really lodgers, and their landlady, Madame Everaert, waited on them. She was a fat, good natured, half Dutch widow, who took from the first a lively interest in the invalid mother, and in the daughter who would have been so handsome if she had been stouter and more rosy; and in a very little while she found that her new lodgers had one quality, which above all others gave them a claim on her good will, they were excellent listeners. Almost every evening in the twilight she would come herself to their sitting-room, with the lamp, or with some other errand for an excuse, and would stay chattering in her droll Flemish French for at least half an hour. This came to be one of the features of the day. Another was a daily walk, which Lucia had most frequently to take alone, but which always gave her either from the shore, or from the ramparts, a long sorrowful look over the sea towards England—towards Canada perhaps—or instead of either, to some far-away fairy country where there were no mistakes and no misunderstandings.

Between these two—between morning and evening—time was almost a blank. Lucia had completely given up her habits of study. She did not even read novels, except aloud; and when she was not in some way occupied in caring for her mother, she sat hour after hour by the window, with a piece of crochet, which seemed a second Penelope's web, for it never was visibly larger one day than it had been the day before. Mrs. Costello gradually grew anxious as she perceived how dull and inanimate her daughter remained. She would almost have been glad of an excuse for giving her a gentle scolding, but Lucia's entire submission and sweetness of temper made it impossible. There seemed nothing to be done, but to try to force her into cheerful occupation, and to hope that time and her own good sense would do the rest. Hitherto they had had no piano; they got one, and for a day or two Lucia made a languid pretence of practising. But one day she was turning over her music, among which were a number of quaint old English songs and madrigals, which she and Maurice had jointly owned long ago at Cacouna, when she came upon one the words of which she had been used to laugh at, much to the annoyance of her fellow-singers. She had a half remembrance of them, and turned the pages to look if they were really so absurd. The music she knew well, and how the voices blended in the quaint pathetic harmony.

"Out alas! my faith is ever true, Yet will she never rue, Nor grant me any grace. I sit and sigh, I weep, I faint, I die, While she alone refuseth sympathy."

She shut the music up, and would have said, if anybody had asked her, that she had no patience with such foolish laments, even in poetry; but, nevertheless, the verse stayed in her memory, haunted her fancy perpetually, and seemed like a living voice in her ears—

"Out alas! my faith is ever true."

She cared no more for singing, for every song she liked was associated with Maurice, and each one seemed now to have the same burden; and when she played, it was no longer gay airs, or even the wonderful 'Morceaux de Salon,' of incredible noise and difficulty, which had been required of her as musical exhibitions, but always some melancholy andante or reverie which seemed to come to her fingers without choice or intention.

One day when she had gone for her solitary walk, and Mrs. Costello all alone was lying on the sofa, trying to read, but really considering with some uneasiness the condition of their affairs, Madame Everaert knocked at the door.

She brought with her a fresh bunch of flowers just bought in the market, but she was as usual overflowing with talk.

"It is extremely hot," she said, fanning herself with her pocket handkerchief, "and I met mademoiselle going out. It is excessively hot."

Mrs. Costello looked uneasy.

"Do you think it is too hot to be out?" she asked.

"No. Perhaps not. Certainly, mademoiselle has gone to the ramparts, and the walk there is not nearly so hot and fatiguing as down to the beach. Mademoiselle is very fond of the sea."

"Yes, she enjoys it greatly. It is new to her."

"One day, not long ago, I was coming along the top of the ramparts,—madame has not been there?"

"No."

"There is a broad space on the top, and it is covered with soft green turf quite pleasant to sit down upon. Very few people pass, and you can see a long way out to sea. Well, one day I came along there, because upon the grass it was pleasanter walking than on the stones in the street, and I saw Mademoiselle Lucia who was sitting quite quiet, looking out far away. I came very near, but she never saw me. I thought I would speak to her just to say how beautiful the day was, and the air so sweet, when I saw just in time madame, that she was crying. Great big tears were falling down on her hands, and she never seemed to feel them even. Mon Dieu, madame! I could hardly keep from crying myself, she looked so sad; but I went by softly, and she never saw me. Mademoiselle regrets England very much."

"She has never been in England. She was born in Canada, and that, you know, is very far away."

"In Canada! Is it possible? Does madame come from Canada?"

"Yes."

"And it is in Canada our good father Paul has suffered so much! Oh, the terrible country!"

"Why should it be terrible? I have seen Father Paul, and he does not look as if he had suffered much."

"Not now, Dieu merci. But long ago. Madame, he went to convert the savages—the Indians."

Mrs. Costello started. Father Paul was a Jesuit priest—an old venerable man—old enough, as it flashed into her mind, to have been one of the Moose Island missionaries. Yet such an idea was improbable—there had no doubt been many other Jesuit missions besides the one where Christian had been trained.

"Do you know where it was that he went?" she asked, after a moment's pause.

"It was in Canada," Madame Everaert repeated, "and he lived among the savages; if madame is from Canada, she would know where the savages live."

"There are very few savages now," Mrs. Costello answered with a smile. "I know where there used to be some—possibly that was the very place."

"No doubt. I shall tell the good father that madame knows it."

"Stay. Don't be quite sure that it is the place. Canada is a very large country."

"Still it is so singular that madame should come from there. Father Paul will be delighted."

Mrs. Costello thought a minute. She was greatly tempted to wish to see this priest who might have known her husband. She need not betray herself to him. For the rest, she had noticed him often, and thought what a good, pleasant face he had—a little too round and rosy perhaps, but very honest and not vulgar. He might be an agreeable visitor, even if he had no other claim on her.

"Do you think," she said, "that he would mind coming to see me? I should be very glad to receive him."

"I am sure he would be charmed. He likes so much to talk of Canada."

"Will you say to him then, please, that I have lived there many years and should be very pleased to have a chat with him about it. I might be able to give him news."

Madame Everaert was delighted. She went away quite satisfied to find Father Paul at the very earliest opportunity, and to deliver to him with empressement Mrs. Costello's invitation.

Lucia, meanwhile, took her usual walk. She went quickly along the stony streets and climbed up the grassy side of the rampart. It was all still and solitary, and she sat down where there lay before her a wide stretch of perfectly level country, only broken by the lines of the old fortifications, and bordered by the sea. In the clear morning sunshine, she could distinguish the white foam where the waves broke against the wooden pier, and out on the blue waters there were white shining specks of sails. Ships coming and going, and on the beach moving groups of people—everywhere something that had life and motion and looked on to a future, an object beyond this present moment—everywhere but here with her.

"Oh," she said to herself, "how wearisome life is! What good to myself or to anybody else is this existence of mine? Am I never either to be good or happy again? Happy, I suppose that does not so much matter—but good? If people are wrong once, can they never get right again? I used to think I should like to be a Sister of Mercy—and now that is all that is left for me, I do not feel any inclination for it. I don't think I have a vocation even for that."

And at this point she fell into a lower depth of melancholy—one of those sad moods which, at eighteen, have even a kind of charm in their exaggeration.



CHAPTER XX.

A day or two later there came, forwarded from Paris, an English letter for Mrs. Costello. It arrived in the evening, at a time when they had no expectation of receiving anything, and Madame Everaert brought it up, and delivered it into Mrs. Costello's own hand, so that Lucia was not near enough to see from whom it came. The general appearance of the letter made her think it was English, and she knew that Mr. Wynter had their present address and would not write to Paris. So she felt a half-joyful, half-frightened suspicion that it must be from Maurice, and her idea was confirmed by her mother's proceedings. For Mrs. Costello having looked at the address, put the letter quietly in her pocket, and went on talking about Father Paul, from whom they were expecting a visit.

Lucia could hardly restrain herself. It was clear that Mrs. Costello did not mean to open the letter before her, or to tell her whence it came; but her anxiety to know was only increased by this certainty. She had almost made up her mind to ask plainly whether it was from Maurice, when the door opened and the old priest came in.

He was a fine-looking, white-haired man of more than seventy, to whom the long black robe seemed exactly the most suitable dress possible, and he had a good manner too, which was neither that of a mere priest, nor of a mere gentleman, but belonged to both. The first few minutes of talk made Mrs. Costello sure that she did not repent having invited his acquaintance; a fact which had been in some little doubt before.

She had said to him, "Madame Everaert told me you knew Canada, and, as we are Canadians, I could not resist the wish to see one who might still feel an interest in our country," and this turned the conversation immediately to what she desired to hear.

He answered her with a smile, "Probably my knowledge of Canada is very different from yours; mine is almost entirely confined to the wilder and less settled parts—to the Indian lands, in fact."

"In Upper Canada?"

"Yes. And then it is many years since I returned."

"I have lived for twenty years in Upper Canada; and of some of the Indians, the Ojibways of Moose Island, I have heard a great deal; perhaps you know them?"

The priest's eye brightened, but next moment he sighed.

"The very place!" he said. "Unhappy people! But I am forgetting that you, madame, are not likely to share my feelings on the subject."

"I do not know," Mrs. Costello answered, "that we should be wholly disagreed. I have heard, I may almost say I know myself, much of your mission there."

"Is it possible? Can any good remain still?"

"One of your old pupils died lately, and in his last hours he remembered nothing so well as your teaching."

Her voice shook; this sudden mention of her husband, voluntary as it was, agitated her strongly. Father Paul saw it and wondered, but appeared to see nothing.

"Poor boys! You console me, madame, for many sad thoughts. I was a young man then, and, as you see, I am now a very old one, but I have known few more sorrowful days than the one when I left Moose Island."

"Yet it must have been a hard and wearisome life?"

"Hard?—Yes—but not wearisome. We were ready to bear the hardness as long as we hoped to see the fruit of our labours. I thought there had been no fruit, or very little; but you prove to me that I was too faithless."

Mrs. Costello remained a moment silent. She was much inclined to trust her guest with that part of her story which referred to Christian—no doubt he was in the habit of keeping stranger secrets than hers.

While she hesitated he spoke again.

"But the whole face of the country must have changed since I knew it. Did you live in that neighbourhood?"

"For several years—all the first years of my married life, I lived on Moose Island itself, and my daughter—come to me a moment, Lucia,—was born there."

She took Lucia's hand and drew her forward. The remaining daylight fell full upon her dark hair and showed the striking outlines of her face and graceful head.

Father Paul looked in amazement—looked from the daughter to the mother, and the mother to the daughter, not knowing what to think or say.

Mrs. Costello relieved his embarrassment.

"My marriage was a strange one," she said. "The old pupil of whom I spoke to you just now, was my husband."

"Your husband, madame? Do I understand you? Mademoiselle's father then was—"

"An Indian."

He remained dumb with astonishment, not willing to give vent to the exclamations of surprise and almost sorrow which he felt might be offensive to his hostess, while she told him in the fewest possible words of her marriage to Christian and separation from him.

There was one thought in the old priest's mind, which had never, at anytime, occurred to Mrs. Costello—Christian had been destined for the Church. He had taken no vows, certainly; but for years he had been trained with that object, and at one time his vocation had seemed remarkably clear and strong—his marriage, at all, therefore, seemed to add enormity to his other guilt.

And yet there was a sort of lurking tenderness for the boy who had been the favourite pupil of the mission—who had seemed to have such natural aptitude for good of all sorts, until suddenly the mask dropped off, and the good turned to evil. It might be that his misdoings were but the result of a temporary possession of the evil one himself, and that at last all might have been well.

Mrs. Costello spoke more fully as she saw how deep was the listener's interest in her story; yet, when she came near the end, she almost shrank from the task. The sacred tenderness which belongs to the dead, had fallen like a veil over all her last memories of her husband; and now she wanted to share them with this good old man, whose teaching had made them what they were.

More than once she had to stop, to wait till her voice was less unsteady, but she went on to the very end—even to that strange burial in the waters. When all was told, there was a silence in the room; Father Paul had wet eyes, unseen in the dusk, and he did not care to speak; Lucia, whose tears were very ready of late; was crying quietly, with her head lying against the end of the sofa, while Mrs. Costello, leaning back on her cushions, waited quietly till the painful throbbing of her heart should subside.

At last Lucia rose and stole out of the room. She went to her own, and lay down on her bed still crying, though she could hardly tell why. Her trouble about the letter still haunted and worried her, and her spirit was so broken that she was like a sick child, neither able nor anxious to command herself.

Meanwhile the lamp had been brought into the sitting-room, and the two elder people had recommenced their conversation. It was of a less agitating kind now, but the subject was not very different, and both were deeply interested, so that time passed on quickly, and the evening was gone before they were aware. When Father Paul rose to go, he said, "Madam, I thank you for all you have told me. Your secret is safe with me; but I beg your permission to share the rest of your intelligence with one of my brothers—the only survivor except myself of that mission. If you will permit me, I shall visit you again—I should like much to make friends with mademoiselle, your daughter. She recalls to me strongly the features of my once greatly loved pupil."

With this little speech he departed, and left Mrs. Costello to wonder over this last page in her husband's history. Only a year ago how little would she have believed it possible that a man respectable, nay, venerable, as this old priest, would have thought kindly of Lucia for her father's sake!

After a little while she got up and went to look for her daughter. She found her sitting at a window, looking forlornly out at the lights and movements in the place, and not very ready to meet the lamplight when she came back into the sitting-room. Still, however, she heard nothing of the letter, nor even when she bade her mother good night and lingered a little at the very last, hoping for one word, even though it might be a reproach, to tell her that it was from Maurice.

She had to go to her room disconsolate. She heard Mrs. Costello go to hers, and close the door.

'Now,' she thought, 'it will be opened. It cannot be from him, or mamma could not have waited so long. But I don't know; she has such self-command! I used to fancy I could be patient at great need—and I am not one bit.'

However, as waiting and listening for every sound brought her no nearer to the obtaining of her wishes, she undressed and lay down, and began to try to imagine what the letter could be. Gradually, from thinking, she fell into dreaming, and dropped into a doze.

But before she was sound asleep, the door opened, and Mrs. Costello shading her candle with her hand, came into the room. Lucia had been so excited that the smallest movement was sufficient to awake her. She started up and said, "What is it mamma?" in a frightened voice.

"It is late," Mrs. Costello said. "Quite time you were asleep, but I am glad you are not. Lie down. I shall sit here for a few minutes and tell you what I want to say."

Lucia obeyed. She saw that her mother had a paper in her hand—no doubt the letter. Now she should hear.

"I had a letter to-night," her mother went on. "I dare say you wondered I did not open it at once. The truth was, I saw that it was in Mr. Leigh's writing, and I had reason to feel a little anxious as to what he might say."

"Yes, mamma."

Lucia could say no more; but she waited eagerly for the news that must be coming—news of Maurice.

"I shall give you the letter to read. Bring it back to me in the morning; but before you do so, think well what you will do. I would never ask you to be untrue to yourself in such a matter; but I entreat you to see that you do know your own mind, and to use your power of saying yes or no, if you should ever have it, not like a foolish girl, but like a woman, who must abide all her life by the consequences of her decision."

Mrs. Costello kissed her daughter's forehead, lighted the candle which stood on a small table, and leaving the letter beside it, went softly away.

The moment the door closed, Lucia eagerly stretched out her arm and took the letter. Her hands trembled; the light seemed dim; and Mr. Leigh's cramped old-fashioned handwriting was more illegible than ever; but she read eagerly, devouring the words.

"My dear Mrs. Costello,—You may think, perhaps, that I ought not to interfere in a matter in which I have not been consulted; but you know that to us, who have in all the world nothing to care for but one only child, that child's affairs are apt to be much the same as our own.

"Maurice told me, just before we left Canada, what I might have been certain of long before if I had not been a stupid old man—that it was the hope of his life to marry your Lucia. He went to Paris, certainly, with the intention of asking her to marry him; and he came back quite unexpectedly, and looking ten years older—so changed, not only in looks, but in all his ways of speaking and acting, that it was clear to me some great misfortune had happened. Still he said very little to me, and it appears incredible that Lucia can have refused him. Perhaps that seems an arrogant speech for his father to make—but you will understand that I mean if she knew how constantly faithful he has been to her ever since they were both children;—and if she has done so in some momentary displeasure with him (for you know they used to have little quarrels sometimes), or if they have parted in anger, I beg of you, dear Mrs. Costello, for the sake of his mother, to try to put things right between them.

"I must tell you plainly that I am writing without my son's knowledge. I would very much rather he should never know I have written; but I have been urged to do it by some things that have happened lately.

"Some time ago Maurice, speaking to me of Mr. Beresford's will, told me that there had been a little difficulty in tracing one of the persons named as legatees. This was a cousin of Mr. Beresford's, with whom he seems to have had very little acquaintance, and no recent intercourse whatever; although, except Lady Dighton, she was the nearest relative he had. The lawyers discovered, while Maurice was in Canada, that this lady herself was dead. Her marriage had been unfortunate, and she had a spendthrift son, to whom, as his mother's heir, the money left by Mr. Beresford passed; but it appeared that she had also a daughter, who was in unhappy circumstances, being dependent on some relation of her father. Maurice, very naturally and properly, thought that, as head of the family, it was his duty to arrange something for this lady's comfort; and accordingly, being in London, where she lives, he called on her. She has since then been in this neighbourhood, and I have seen her several times. She is a young lady of agreeable appearance and manners, and seems qualified to become popular, if she were in a position to do so. I should not have thought of this, however, if it had not been for a few words Maurice said to me one day. I asked him some question about marrying, hoping to hear some allusion to Lucia, but he said very gravely that he should certainly marry some time; he had promised his grandfather to do so. Then he said suddenly, 'What would you think of Emma Landor for a daughter-in-law?' 'Emma Landor?' I answered; 'what has put her into your head?' 'Just this, sir,' he said; 'if I am to marry as a duty, I had better find somebody to whom I shall do some good, and not all evil, by marrying them. Emma would enjoy being mistress here; she would do it well, too; and having Hunsdon, she would not miss anything else that might be wanting.' With that he went out of the room; and after awhile I persuaded myself that he meant nothing serious by what he had said. However, Lady Dighton has spoken to me of the same thing since. Both she and I are convinced now that Maurice thinks—you may be, better then we are, able to understand why—that he has lost Lucia, and that, therefore, a marriage of convenience is all that he can hope for. Perhaps I am mistaken, or, at all events, too soon alarmed; but the mere idea of his proposing to this young lady throws me into a panic. If she should accept him (and Lady Dighton thinks she probably would), it would be a life-long misery. I am old-fashioned enough to think it would be a sin. He will not do it yet; perhaps he may see you again before he does. Do, I entreat of you, use the great influence you have always had with him to set things right. I have written a very long letter, because I could not ask your help without explaining; but I trust to your kindness to sympathize with my anxiety. Kindest regards to Lucia."

Lucia put down the paper. The whole letter, slowly and painfully deciphered, seemed to make no impression on her brain. She lay still, with a sort of stunned feeling, till the sense of what she had read came to her fully.

"Oh, Maurice!" she cried under her breath, "I want you! Come back to me! She shall never have you! You belong to me!" She covered her face with her hands, ashamed of even hearing her own words; then she got up and went across to her window, and looked out at the light burning on the tower—the light which shone far across the sea towards England. But presently she came back, and reached her little desk—Maurice's gift long ago—and knelt down on the floor, and wrote, kneeling,—



"Dear Maurice, you promised that if ever I wanted you, you would come. I want you now more than ever I did in my life. Please, please come. "LUCIA."



Then she leaned her head down till it almost touched the paper, and stayed so for a few minutes before she got up from her knees and extinguished her candle.



CHAPTER XXI.

In the morning, when Lucia woke, her note to Maurice lay on the open desk, where she had left it, and was the first thing to remind her of what she had heard and done. She went and took it up to destroy it, but laid it down again irresolutely.

"I do want him," she said to herself. "Without any nonsense, I ought to see him again before he does anything. I ought to tell him I am sorry for being so cross and ungrateful; and if he were married, or even engaged, I could not do it; it would be like confessing to a stranger."

There was something very like a sob, making her throat swell as she considered. He would perhaps see them again, Mr. Leigh said. Ought she to trust to that chance? But then her courage might fail if he came over just like any ordinary visitor; and her young cousins from Chester were coming; and if they should be there, it would be another hindrance. "And, oh! I must see him again," she said, "and find out whether we are not to be brother and sister any more."

She said "brother and sister" still, as she had done long ago; but she knew very well in her heart now, that that had never been the relationship Maurice desired. And so she tore her note into little bits, and remained helpless, but rebelling against her helplessness. In this humour she went to her mother's room.

Mrs. Costello was not yet up. Lucia knelt down by the bedside, and laid Mr. Leigh's letter beside her.

"Mamma, I am very sorry," she said; "I think Mr. Leigh must have been very unhappy before he would write to you so."

"I agree with you. He is not a man to take fright without cause, either."

"Why do you say, 'to take fright?'"

"Why do I say so? Are you such a child still, that you cannot understand a man like Maurice, always so tender towards women—Quixotically so, indeed—making himself believe that he is doing quite right in marrying a poor girl in Miss Landor's position, when, in fact, he is doing a great wrong? It is a double wrong to her and to himself; and one for which he would be certain to suffer, whether she did or not. And, Lucia I must say it, whatever evil may come of it, now or in the future, is our fault."

"Oh, mamma! mamma, don't say 'our'—say 'your'—if it is mine—for certainly it is not yours."

"I will say your fault, then; I believe you feel it so."

"But, mamma, really and truly, is it anybody's fault? Don't people often love those who can't care for them in return?"

"Really and truly, quite honestly and frankly, Lucia, was that the case with you?"

Lucia's eyes fell. She could not say yes.

"I will tell you," Mrs. Costello went on, "what I believe to be the truth, and you can set me right if I am wrong. You knew that Maurice had always been fond of you—devoted to you, in a way that had come by use to seem natural; and it had never entered your mind to think either how much of your regard he deserved, or how much he really had. I will not say anything about Percy; but I do believe," and she spoke very deliberately, laying her hand on Lucia's, "that since Maurice went away, you have been finding out that you had made a mistake, and that your heart had not been wrong nearly so much as your imagination."

Lucia was still silent. If she had spoken at all, it must have been to confess that her mother was right, and that was not easy to do. Whatever suspicions she might have in her own heart, it was a mortifying thing to be told plainly that her love for Percy was a mistake—a mere counterfeit—instead of the enduring devotion which it ought to have been. But she was very much humbled now, and patiently waited for what her mother might say next.

"Well!" Mrs. Costello began again, "it is no use now to go on talking of the past. The question is rather whether anything can be done for the future. What do you say?"

"What can I say, mamma? What can I do?"

"I don't know. Maurice used to tell me of his plans, but he is not likely to do that now. I would write and ask him to come over, but it is more than doubtful whether he would come."

"He promised that if ever I wanted him he would come," Lucia said, hesitating.

"If you were in need of him I am sure he would, but it would be a kind of impertinence to send for him on that plea when it was not really for that."

"But it is. Mamma, don't be angry with me again! Don't be disgusted with me; but I want, so badly, to see him and tell him I behaved wrongly. I was so cross, so ungrateful, so horrid, mamma, that it was enough to make him think all girls bad. I should like to tell him how sorry I am; I feel as if I should never be happy till I did."

When, after this outbreak, Lucia's face went down upon her hands, Mrs. Costello could not resist a little self-gratulatory smile. 'All may come right yet,' she thought to herself, 'if that wilful boy will only come over.'

"I think you are right," she said aloud. "Possibly he may come over, and then you will have an opportunity of speaking to him, perhaps."

"Yes," Lucia said, very slowly, thinking of her note, and of the comfort it would have been if she could but have sent it. "Oh, mamma, if we were but in England!"

"Useless wishes, dear. Give me your advice about writing to Mr. Leigh."

"You will write, will you not?"

"I suppose I must. Yet it is a difficult letter for me to answer."

"Could not you just say 'I will do what I can?'"

"Which is absolutely nothing—unless Maurice should really pay us a visit here, a thing not likely at present."

So the conversation ended without any satisfaction to Lucia. Nay, all her previous days had been happy compared to this one. She was devoured now, by a restless, jealous curiosity about that Miss Landor whom Mr. Leigh feared—she constantly found her thoughts reverting to this subject, however she might try to occupy them with others, and the tumult of her mind reacted upon her nerves. She could scarcely bear to sit still. It rained all afternoon and evening, and she could not go out, so that in the usual course of events she would have read aloud to her mother part of the time, and for the other part sat by the window with her crochet in her hand, but to-day she wandered about perpetually. She even opened the piano and began to sing her merriest old songs, but that soon ceased. She found the novel they were reading insufferably stupid, and took up a volume of Shakespeare for refreshment, but it opened naturally to the 'Merchant of Venice,' and, to the page where Portia says:—

"Though for myself alone, I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better, yet for you I would be trebled twenty times myself; A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich; That only to stand high on your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account."

She shut the book—yes, this was a true woman, who for true love thought herself and all she possessed too little to give in return; but for the little, foolish, blind souls that could not see till too late, what was true love, she was no fit company.

The evening passed on wearily, and Mrs. Costello, who had her own share of disquiet also, though it was mixed with a little amusement at the impetuosity of these young people, who were so dear to her and so troublesome, did very little in the way of consolation.

Next day, the weather had cleared again, and was very lovely. In the afternoon, Lucia persuaded Mrs. Costello to go with her to the beach. There they got chairs, and sat for a long while enjoying the gay, and often comical, scene round them. Numbers of people were bathing, and beside the orthodox bathers, there was a party of little boys wading about with bare legs, and playing all sorts of pranks in the water.

A little way to the left of where they sat, there was a curious kind of wooden pier, which ran far away out into the sea and terminated in a small square wooden building. The whole thing was raised on piles about five or six feet above the present level of the water which flowed underneath it. The pier itself, in fact, was only a narrow bridge or footpath railed partly on one side only, partly on both, and with an oddly unsafe and yet tempting look about it. Lucia had been attracted by it before, and she drew her mother's attention to it now—

"Look, mamma," she said, "does not it seem as if one could almost cross the Channel on it, it goes so far out. See that woman, now—I have watched since she started from this end, and now you can scarcely distinguish her figure."

"There is a priest coming along it—is it not Father Paul?"

"I do believe it is. I wish he would come and talk to you for a little while, and then I would go."

"You need not stay for that, dear. I shall sit here alone quite comfortably, if you wish to go out there."

"I should like very much to go. I want to see what the sea looks like away from the beach. There is no harm, is there?"

"None whatever. Go, and I will watch you."

Lucia rose to go.

"It is Father Paul," she said, "and he is coming this way."

She lingered a minute, and the priest, who had recognized them, came up.

Mrs. Costello told him of Lucia's wish to go out on the pier, and he assured her she would enjoy it.

"The air seems even fresher there than here," he said; and she went off, and left him and her mother together.

For a few minutes they talked about the weather, the sea, and the people about them, as two slight acquaintances would naturally do; but then, when there had been a momentary pause, Father Paul startled Mrs. Costello, by saying,

"Last night, madam, you told me of persons I had not heard of for years—this morning, strangely enough, I have met with a person of whom you probably know something—or knew something formerly."

"I?" she answered. "Impossible! I know no one in France."

"This is not a Frenchman. He is named Bailey, an American, I believe."

"Bailey?" Mrs. Costello repeated, terrified. "Surely he is not here?"

"There is a man of that name here—a miserable ruined gambler, who says that he knows Moose Island, and once travelled in Europe with a party of Indians."

"And what is he doing now?"

"Nothing. He is the most wretched, squalid object you can imagine. He came to me this morning to ask for the loan of a few francs. He had not even the honesty to beg without some pretence of an intention to pay."

"Is he so low then as to need to beg?"

"Madame, he is a gambler, I repeat it. If he had a hundred francs to-night, he would most likely be penniless to-morrow morning."

"And he claimed charity from you because of your connection with Canada?"

"Exactly. Having no other plea. I was right, madame: you know this man?"

"He was my bitterest enemy!" she answered, half rising in her vehemence. "But for him I might have had a happy life."

Father Paul looked shocked.

"Forgive me," he said, in a troubled voice, "I am grieved to have spoken of him."

"On the contrary, I am thankful you did so. If I had met him by chance in the street, I believe he could not change so much that I should not know him, and he—"

She stopped, then asked abruptly,

"You did not mention me?"

"Most assuredly not."

"Yet he might recognise me. What shall I do?"

She was speaking to herself, and not to her companion now, and she looked impatiently towards the pier where Lucia was slowly coming back.

Presently she recovered herself a little, and asked a few more questions about Bailey. She gathered from the answers that he had been some time at Bourg-Cailloux, getting gradually more poverty-stricken and utterly disreputable. That he was now wandering about without a home, or money even for gambling. She knew enough of the man to be certain that under such circumstances he would snatch at any means of obtaining money, and what means easier, if he only knew it, than to threaten and persecute her. And at any moment he might discover her—her very acquaintance with Father Paul might betray her to him. She cast a terrified look over all the groups of people on the beach, half expecting to see the well-remembered features of Bailey among them; but he was not there. Close by her, however, stood Lucia, and at a little distance the carriage, which had been ordered to fetch them, was just drawing up.



CHAPTER XXII.

Mrs. Costello said nothing to Lucia on their way home about Bailey. She sat in her corner of the carriage, leaning back and thinking despairingly what to do. Her spirits had so far given way with her failing health that she no longer felt the courage necessary to face annoyance. And it was plainly to be feared that in case this man discovered her, he would have no scruples, being so needy and degraded, about using every means in his power to extort money from her. Undoubtedly he had such means—he had but to tell her story, as he could tell it, and not only her own life, but Lucia's, would be made wretched; the separation from Maurice, which she was beginning to hope might be only temporary, would become irrevocable—and, what seemed to her still more terrible, there would be perpetual demands from her enemy, and the misery of perpetual contact with him. To buy off such a man, at once and finally, was, she knew, utterly beyond her power—what then could she do?

When they were at home, and the door of their sitting-room safely closed, she turned anxiously to Lucia,

"Bailey is here," she said.

"Bailey?" Lucia repeated—she had forgotten the name.

"The man who was present at my marriage—the American."

"Mamma! How do you know?"

"Father Paul told me just now."

"How did he know?"

"The wretched man had gone to him begging, and he mentioned him to me by chance, thinking I might know something about him."

"But surely he would not remember you?"

"I think he would. If by any accident he met you and me together, I am certain he would."

"Ah! I am so like my father."

"Lucia, I dare not meet him. I believe the very sight of him would kill me."

"Let us go away, mamma. He knows nothing about us yet. We might start to-morrow."

"Where should we go? Even at our own door we might meet him, at the railway station—anywhere. No, it is only inside these walls we are safe, and scarcely here."

Mrs. Costello was literally trembling, the panic which had seized her was so great; Lucia, not fully understanding yet, could not help being infected by her terror.

"But, mamma, we cannot shut ourselves up in these rooms. That, with the constant fear added to it, would soon make you ill again."

"What can we do?" Mrs. Costello repeated helplessly. "If, indeed, we could start to-night, and go south, or go out of France altogether. But I have not even money in the house for our journey."

"And if you had, you have not strength for it. Would not it be well to consult Mr. Wynter? If we had any friend here who would make the arrangement for us, I don't see why we should not be able to go away without any fear of meeting this man."

"No; that would not do. To consult George would just be opening up again all that was most painful—it would be almost as bad as meeting Bailey himself."

"And we could not be stopped even if we did meet Bailey. Let me go alone, mamma, and do what is to be done—it is not much. If I meet him I shall not know it, and seeing me alone, the likeness cannot be so strong as to make him recognize me all at once."

"But he might see us together when we start from here; and he might trace us. He would know at once that he could get money from me, and for money he would do anything."

She leaned back, and was silent a minute.

"We must keep closely shut up for a little while, till I can decide what to do. I wish Maurice would come."