"Well, no, Miss Lucia, I had a kind of guess it was better not. You see she is not very strong, and I thought you could tell her when you came if you thought it was any use."

"Thank you, Margery, you were quite right."

Lucia went in slowly, thinking the matter over. It did not, however, appear to her advisable to conceal from her mother the squaw's visit--it might have greater significance than she, knowing so little, could imagine--but she wished extremely that she possessed some gauge by which to measure beforehand the degree of agitation her news was likely to produce. She had none, however, and could devise no better plan than that of telling Mrs. Costello, quite simply, what she had just heard from Margery.

As she opened the door of the parlour, Mrs. Costello half rose from the sofa, where she was lying.

"Is it you, darling," she asked, "so soon?"

"There is a storm coming on," Lucia answered; "we hurried home to escape it."

"And you have had a pleasant day?"

"Very pleasant. You have been out, too?"

"Yes; poor Mr. Leigh is quite an invalid, and complains that he never sees you now."

"I will go to-morrow," Lucia said hastily, and then, glad to escape from the subject, asked if her mother had seen an Indian woman about?

Mrs. Costello answered no, but Lucia felt her start, and went on to repeat, in as unconcerned a tone as possible, Margery's story; but when she said that her own name had been mentioned, her mother stopped her.

"Was the woman a stranger? Have you ever seen her?"

"She was a stranger to Margery certainly. I think I saw her to-day."

"Where? Tell me all you know of her."

Lucia described the squaw's appearance at the farm.

"It must be Mary," Mrs. Costello said half to herself. "What shall I do?

How escape?"

She rose from the sofa and walked with hurried steps up and down the room. Lucia watched her in miserable perplexity till she suddenly stopped.

"Is that all?" she asked. "Did she go away?"

Lucia finished her account, and when she had done so, Mrs. Costello came back to the sofa and sat down. She put her arm round her daughter, and drawing her close to her, she said, "You are a good child, Lucia, for you ask no questions, though you may well think your mother ought to trust you. Be patient only a little longer, till I have thought all over. Perhaps we shall be obliged to go away. I cannot tell."

"Away from Cacouna, mamma?"

"Away from Cacouna and from Canada. Away from all you love--can you bear it?"

"Yes--with you;" but the first pang of parting came with those words.

CHAPTER VI.

"Away from all you love!" The words haunted Lucia after she lay down in her little white bed that night. There, in the midst of every object familiar to her through all her life, surrounded by the perfect atmosphere of home, she repeated, with wondering trouble, the threat that had come to her. When at last she slept, these words, and the pale face of her mother bending over her as she closed her eyes, mixed themselves with her dreams. At last, she fancied that a violent storm had come on in the very noon of a brilliant summer day. She herself, her mother, Percy and Maurice seemed to be standing on the river bank watching how the sky darkened, and the water rose in great waves at their feet. Suddenly a canoe appeared, and in it a hideous old squaw, who approached the shore, and stretching out a long bony hand drew her away from her mother's side, and in spite of her terror made her step into the frail boat, which instantly flew down the stream into the darkest and wildest of the storm. She stretched out her arms for help--Percy stood still upon the bank, as if anxious but unable to give it--Maurice waved his hand to her, and turned away. She seemed to know that he was deserting her for ever, and in an agony of fear and sorrow she gathered all her strength to call him back. The effort woke her. She lay trembling, with tears of agitation pouring from her eyes, while the storm which had mingled with her dream raged furiously round the Cottage.

Morning came at last, dim and dreary. The wind subsided at dawn, but the sky was full of torn and jagged clouds, carried hither and thither by its varying currents. All over the ground lay broken flowers and sprays torn from the trees, the vine had been loosened in several places from its fastenings and hung disconsolately over the verandah--all looked ravaged and desolate, as Lucia pressed her hot cheek against the rain-covered window, and tried to shake off the misery--still new to her--which belongs to the early morning after a restless, fevered night.

But as the sun rose bright and warm, her spirits naturally revived; she dressed early, and went out into the garden, intent upon remedying as far as possible the mischief that had been done, before her mother should see it; and accustomed as she was to work among her much-beloved plants, the task was soon making quick progress. But among her roses, the most valued of all her flowers, a new discouragement awaited her.

One beautiful tree, the finest of all, which yesterday had been splendid in the glory of its late blossoms, had been torn up by the wind, and flung down battered and half covered with sand at a little distance from the bed where it had grown. The sight of this misfortune seemed to Lucia almost more than she could bear; she sat down upon a garden-seat close by, and looked at her poor rose-tree as if its fate were to be a type of her own. She recollected a thousand trifles connected with it; how she had disputed with Mr. Percy about its beauty, arguing that it was less perfect than some others, because he had said it was more so; she remembered how from that very tree she had gathered a blossom for him the first day he came to the Cottage. Then, in her fanciful mood, she reproached herself for letting her unfortunate favourite speak to her only of him, and forgetting that it was Maurice who had obtained it for her, who had planted it, and would be sorry for its destruction. She rose, and tried to lift the broken tree; but as she leaned over it, Maurice himself passed through the wicket, and came towards her. She turned to meet him as if it were quite natural that he should come just then.

"Oh, Maurice, look! I am so sorry."

"Your pet rose-tree? But perhaps it will recover yet."

He raised it carefully, while she stood looking on.

"It is not much broken, after all. I will plant it again; and with plenty of support and shade, I think it will do."

Lucia flew to bring her spade. She held the tree, while Maurice carefully arranged its roots and piled the earth about them; the scattered leaves were picked up from the bed, and a kind of tent made with matting over the invalid; at last she found time to say,

"But how did you happen to come just at the right moment?"

"I saw you from my window. I noticed that you were very busy for awhile, and when you stopped working and sat down in that disconsolate attitude, I guessed some terrible misfortune must have happened. So I came."

Lucia looked at him gravely, a little troubled.

"I never saw anybody like you," she said; "you seem always to know when one is in a dilemma."

Maurice laughed.

"If all dilemmas were like this, I might easily get up a character for being a sort of Providence; but come and show me what else there is to do."

They worked together for an hour, by the end of which, all was restored nearly to its former neatness. Mrs. Costello came out and found them busy at the vine. Maurice was on a ladder nailing it up, while Lucia handed him the nails and strips of cloth, as he wanted them. She felt a lively pleasure in seeing them thus occupied. Maurice was too dear to her, for her not to have seen how Lucia's recent and gradual estrangement had troubled him; for his sake, therefore, as well as for her own and her child's, she had grieved daily over what she dared not interfere to prevent,--the breaking up of old habits, and the intervention between these two of an influence she dreaded. The experience of her own life had convinced her, rightly or wrongly, that it was worse than useless for parents to try to control their children's inclinations in the most important point where inclination ever ought to be made the rule of conduct. But for years she had hoped that Lucia's affection for Maurice would grow, unchecked and untroubled, till it attained that perfection which she thought the beau ideal of married love; and even now, she held tenaciously to such fragments of her old hope as still remained. This morning, after a night of the most painful anxiety and foreboding, her mind naturally caught at the idea that _all_ could not go wrong with her; that she must have exaggerated the change in Lucia, and that, at least, some of the trouble she had anticipated for her child was a mere chimera.

She came out to them, therefore, pale and weary from her vigil, but cheerful and composed.

"How is your father, Maurice?" she asked; "can you stay with us to breakfast?"

"Thank you, no; my father is so much alone. He seemed better last night.

Your visit did him good."

"I am glad of that. Lucia will go over to-day and stay with him for a while."

"Will she? He says she never comes to see him now."

"Indeed, I will," said Lucia, with a little remorse in her tone. "I will go and read the newspaper straight through to him, from one end to the other."

"Poor Lucia! What a sacrifice to friendship," answered Maurice laughing.

"But to reward you, Blackwood arrived last night, and you will find the new chapter of your favourite story."

Soon after ten o'clock Lucia put on her hat, and, strong in her good resolutions, went along the lane to Mr. Leigh's. She lifted the latch rather timidly, and peeped in. From the tiny entrance she could see into the large square sitting-room, so tidy and so bare, from which the last trace of feminine occupation had passed away three years ago, when Alice Leigh, her old playfellow, died. There, in his high-backed chair, sat the solitary old man, prematurely old, worn out by labour and sorrow before his time. He turned his head at the sound of her entrance, and held out his hand, with a smile of welcome.