"It is extremely hot," she said, fanning herself with her pocket handkerchief, "and I met mademoiselle going out. It is excessively hot."

Mrs. Costello looked uneasy.

"Do you think it is too hot to be out?" she asked.

"No. Perhaps not. Certainly, mademoiselle has gone to the ramparts, and the walk there is not nearly so hot and fatiguing as down to the beach.

Mademoiselle is very fond of the sea."

"Yes, she enjoys it greatly. It is new to her."

"One day, not long ago, I was coming along the top of the ramparts,--madame has not been there?"

"No."

"There is a broad space on the top, and it is covered with soft green turf quite pleasant to sit down upon. Very few people pass, and you can see a long way out to sea. Well, one day I came along there, because upon the grass it was pleasanter walking than on the stones in the street, and I saw Mademoiselle Lucia who was sitting quite quiet, looking out far away. I came very near, but she never saw me. I thought I would speak to her just to say how beautiful the day was, and the air so sweet, when I saw just in time madame, that she was crying. Great big tears were falling down on her hands, and she never seemed to feel them even. Mon Dieu, madame! I could hardly keep from crying myself, she looked so sad; but I went by softly, and she never saw me. Mademoiselle regrets England very much."

"She has never been in England. She was born in Canada, and that, you know, is very far away."

"In Canada! Is it possible? Does madame come from Canada?"

"Yes."

"And it is in Canada our good father Paul has suffered so much! Oh, the terrible country!"

"Why should it be terrible? I have seen Father Paul, and he does not look as if he had suffered much."

"Not now, Dieu merci. But long ago. Madame, he went to convert the savages--the Indians."

Mrs. Costello started. Father Paul was a Jesuit priest--an old venerable man--old enough, as it flashed into her mind, to have been one of the Moose Island missionaries. Yet such an idea was improbable--there had no doubt been many other Jesuit missions besides the one where Christian had been trained.

"Do you know where it was that he went?" she asked, after a moment's pause.

"It was in Canada," Madame Everaert repeated, "and he lived among the savages; if madame is from Canada, she would know where the savages live."

"There are very few savages now," Mrs. Costello answered with a smile.

"I know where there used to be some--possibly that was the very place."

"No doubt. I shall tell the good father that madame knows it."

"Stay. Don't be quite sure that it is the place. Canada is a very large country."

"Still it is so singular that madame should come from there. Father Paul will be delighted."

Mrs. Costello thought a minute. She was greatly tempted to wish to see this priest who might have known her husband. She need not betray herself to him. For the rest, she had noticed him often, and thought what a good, pleasant face he had--a little too round and rosy perhaps, but very honest and not vulgar. He might be an agreeable visitor, even if he had no other claim on her.

"Do you think," she said, "that he would mind coming to see me? I should be very glad to receive him."

"I am sure he would be charmed. He likes so much to talk of Canada."

"Will you say to him then, please, that I have lived there many years and should be very pleased to have a chat with him about it. I might be able to give him news."

Madame Everaert was delighted. She went away quite satisfied to find Father Paul at the very earliest opportunity, and to deliver to him with _empressement_ Mrs. Costello's invitation.

Lucia, meanwhile, took her usual walk. She went quickly along the stony streets and climbed up the grassy side of the rampart. It was all still and solitary, and she sat down where there lay before her a wide stretch of perfectly level country, only broken by the lines of the old fortifications, and bordered by the sea. In the clear morning sunshine, she could distinguish the white foam where the waves broke against the wooden pier, and out on the blue waters there were white shining specks of sails. Ships coming and going, and on the beach moving groups of people--everywhere something that had life and motion and looked on to a future, an object beyond this present moment--everywhere but here with her.

"Oh," she said to herself, "how wearisome life is! What good to myself or to anybody else is this existence of mine? Am I never either to be good or happy again? Happy, I suppose that does not so much matter--but good? If people are wrong once, can they never get right again? I used to think I should like to be a Sister of Mercy--and now that is all that is left for me, I do not feel any inclination for it. I don't think I have a vocation even for that."

And at this point she fell into a lower depth of melancholy--one of those sad moods which, at eighteen, have even a kind of charm in their exaggeration.

CHAPTER XX.

A day or two later there came, forwarded from Paris, an English letter for Mrs. Costello. It arrived in the evening, at a time when they had no expectation of receiving anything, and Madame Everaert brought it up, and delivered it into Mrs. Costello's own hand, so that Lucia was not near enough to see from whom it came. The general appearance of the letter made her think it was English, and she knew that Mr. Wynter had their present address and would not write to Paris. So she felt a half-joyful, half-frightened suspicion that it must be from Maurice, and her idea was confirmed by her mother's proceedings. For Mrs. Costello having looked at the address, put the letter quietly in her pocket, and went on talking about Father Paul, from whom they were expecting a visit.

Lucia could hardly restrain herself. It was clear that Mrs. Costello did not mean to open the letter before her, or to tell her whence it came; but her anxiety to know was only increased by this certainty. She had almost made up her mind to ask plainly whether it was from Maurice, when the door opened and the old priest came in.

He was a fine-looking, white-haired man of more than seventy, to whom the long black robe seemed exactly the most suitable dress possible, and he had a good manner too, which was neither that of a mere priest, nor of a mere gentleman, but belonged to both. The first few minutes of talk made Mrs. Costello sure that she did not repent having invited his acquaintance; a fact which had been in some little doubt before.

She had said to him, "Madame Everaert told me you knew Canada, and, as we are Canadians, I could not resist the wish to see one who might still feel an interest in our country," and this turned the conversation immediately to what she desired to hear.

He answered her with a smile, "Probably my knowledge of Canada is very different from yours; mine is almost entirely confined to the wilder and less settled parts--to the Indian lands, in fact."

"In Upper Canada?"

"Yes. And then it is many years since I returned."

"I have lived for twenty years in Upper Canada; and of some of the Indians, the Ojibways of Moose Island, I have heard a great deal; perhaps you know them?"

The priest's eye brightened, but next moment he sighed.

"The very place!" he said. "Unhappy people! But I am forgetting that you, madame, are not likely to share my feelings on the subject."

"I do not know," Mrs. Costello answered, "that we should be wholly disagreed. I have heard, I may almost say I know myself, much of your mission there."

"Is it possible? Can any good remain still?"

"One of your old pupils died lately, and in his last hours he remembered nothing so well as your teaching."

Her voice shook; this sudden mention of her husband, voluntary as it was, agitated her strongly. Father Paul saw it and wondered, but appeared to see nothing.

"Poor boys! You console me, madame, for many sad thoughts. I was a young man then, and, as you see, I am now a very old one, but I have known few more sorrowful days than the one when I left Moose Island."

"Yet it must have been a hard and wearisome life?"

"Hard?--Yes--but not wearisome. We were ready to bear the hardness as long as we hoped to see the fruit of our labours. I thought there had been no fruit, or very little; but you prove to me that I was too faithless."