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.