"I have never said so. People imagined it, and I was glad that they should, but it is not true."

"Who then? She is dark like a Spaniard or Italian."

"Are there no dark races but those of Europe?"

"_What_ do you mean? Tell me, for Heaven's sake!"

"You have always thought me a widow, yet my husband is still alive. I left him long ago when he did not need me; now he is ill and in prison, and I am going back to him. He is Christian, whom you have all thought a murderer."

"Christian! the Indian? Impossible! Lucia, can this be true?"

"It is true."

"And you knew it all this time?"

"Yes. All the time."

"My poor child, what misery! But I cannot understand. How can this be?"

"Do you not shrink from us! We tell you the truth. We are not what you have always known us; we are only the wife and daughter of an Indian."

"Don't--don't speak so. What difference can it make to me? Only, how could you bear all you must have borne? It is wonderful. I can scarcely believe it yet."

"Do not suppose that Lucia has been deceiving you all these years; _she_ only knew the truth a few months ago."

"But there is no deceit. You had a right to keep such a secret if you chose." Mrs. Bellairs rose. She stepped to Lucia's side and kissed her pale cheeks. "You must have had Indian courage," she said, "to be so brave and steady at your age."

Lucia returned the kiss with an earnestness that expressed a whole world of grateful affection. Then she slipped out of the room, and left the two friends together.

They both sat down again; this time side by side, and Mrs. Costello told in few words as much of her story as was needful. She dwelt, however, so lightly on the sufferings of her life at Moose Island that any one, who had known or loved her less than Mrs. Bellairs did, might have thought she had fled with too little reason from the ties she was now so anxious to resume. She spoke very shortly, too, of the fears she had had during the past summer of some discovery, and mentioned having told Lucia her true history, without any allusion to the particular time when it was told. Mrs. Bellairs recollected the meeting with the squaw at the farm, and inquired whether Lucia then knew of her Indian descent.

"No," Mrs. Costello said, "that was one of the things which alarmed me.

I did not tell her till some time after that; not, indeed, until after Bella's marriage."

"Poor child! and then for this terrible trouble to come! No wonder you are both changed."

"Do you think _her_ changed?" Mrs. Costello asked in alarm. "She has been so brave."

"She has grown to look much older and as if she thought too much; that is all. And _that_ is no wonder."

Mrs. Costello was silent for a moment. She knew that Lucia had had another burden, especially her own, to bear, and it seemed to her that Mrs. Bellairs must know or guess something of it too. If she did, it would be as well for her to know the exact truth. She made up her mind at once.

"I found that it was necessary to tell her," she said, "just before Mr.

Percy went away."

Mrs. Bellairs looked at her inquiringly.

"I was afraid," she answered, "that he was likely to cause you some uneasiness."

"He did more than that," Mrs. Costello said. "He gave Lucia her first hard thoughts of her mother. But after all I may be doing him injustice.

Did you know that he really wanted to carry her away with him?"

"He _did_! And she refused him?"

"She refused him, when she knew her own position, and the impossibility of her marrying him."

"Dear Mrs. Costello, what complications! I begin to understand now all that has puzzled me."

"You had some suspicion of the truth?"

"Of part of it. I don't like Edward Percy, and I was afraid he was gaining an influence with Lucia which would make her unhappy. I even thought at one time that he was really in earnest, but from some news we received a few days ago I set that down as a mistake."

"News of him? What was it?"

"That he is engaged to a lady whom his father wished him to marry; and that they are to be married almost immediately."

"I am very glad," Mrs. Costello said, "and there is nothing to be surprised about. He was tempted for the moment by a pretty face, but he was not a man to waste time in thinking about a girl who had refused him."

She said this; but she thought in her heart, 'He is not like Maurice. If Lucia had refused him so, he would have known that she loved him still; and while she did so, he would have had no thoughts for any other.' She asked, however,

"Did you hear from _him_ that this was true?"

"No. But it was from an old college friend of my husband's who is now in England."

"I do not see any use in telling Lucia. She dismissed him herself, and is, I hope, fast forgetting him in all these other affairs that have come upon us."

"Surely she cannot have cared enough for him to feel the separation as she would have done if he had really been worth loving," Mrs. Bellairs added; and then they left the subject, quite forgetting that reason and love seldom go hand-in-hand, and that Lucia was still devoutly believing in two falsities: first, that Percy was capable of a steady and faithful affection, and secondly, that he must still have something of that affection for her. Even at this very moment she was comforting her heart with this belief; and the discovery that her mother's dearest friends showed no inclination to desert them in their new character, filled her with a kind of blind sweet confidence in that one whom, as she now thought, she had treated so ungenerously, and who did not yet know their secret.

In the parlour, meanwhile, many things were discussed. Mrs. Bellairs assured her friend that the necessary arrangements for Christian's release had already been commenced, and that Mr. Bellairs would see that there was not a moment's delay which could be avoided. On the other hand, however, there was strong in Mrs. Costello's mind the doubt whether her husband would live to be removed. The utmost she now hoped for, with any certainty, was to have liberty to be with him constantly till the end. Finally, she told Mrs. Bellairs of her intention of going to the jail that day and announcing her claim to the first place by the prisoner's sick bed. Mrs. Bellairs thought a little over this plan, then she said,

"It is impossible that in this weather you can be constantly going backwards and forwards between here and the jail. At our house you would be scarcely three minutes' drive away, and there is always the sleigh and Bob. You and Lucia must come and stay with us."

And to this plan after much opposition and argument they were all obliged to give in; Mr. Strafford and Lucia were called into council, but Mrs. Bellairs was resolved.

"You shall see nobody," she said. "You shall be exactly as much at liberty as if you were at home, and it will spare you both time and strength for your nursing. It will do Bella good, too; and if we can be of any use or comfort to you, it will seem a kind of reparation."

CHAPTER XVI.

The end of the conference was that Mr. Strafford started alone for the jail, while Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Bellairs went together to Mr. Leigh, to explain to him the new state of affairs; and after that, drove back to Cacouna, whither Lucia also was to follow later. Mr. Strafford could at that time spare but one day for his friends. He was to leave by the evening's boat; and the Cottage was for the present to be deserted, except by Margery.

Mr. Strafford was admitted with, if possible, even less hesitation than usual to Christian's room. Every one understood now that the prisoner was entirely innocent, and in the revulsion of feeling, every one was disposed to treat with all tenderness and honour as a martyr the very man who, if he had never been falsely accused, they would probably have regarded only with disgust or contempt.

Not that there was room for either feeling _now_. It was as if this man's history had been written from beginning to end, and then the ink washed from all the middle pages. What memory he had left, went back to the days when he had been a pupil of the Jesuit priests, and the traces of that time remained with him, and were evident to all. But all was blank from those days to these, when he lay in the wintry sunshine dying, and scarcely conscious that he was dying in a prison. When a voice out of that forgotten past spoke to him, his recollection seemed to revive for a moment, and he answered in English or in Ojibway, as he was addressed. At other times, if he began to speak at all, it was in French, the most familiar language of his boyhood, and sometimes scraps of the old priestly Latin would come to his lips as he lay half dozing, and dreaming perhaps of his life in the mission-school, and the time when he was to have been a teacher of his own people. Chiefly, however, he lay quite silent, and seemed neither to see nor to hear what took place around him. His face, where the hand of death was already visible, had more of its original beauty than Mr. Strafford had ever seen on it before; and as he came near to the bedside, he for the first time began to comprehend, what had always till now been an enigma to him, why Mary Wynter had loved and married her husband.