"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?"