"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."