“To say good-bye?”

Lucia felt the colour fade out of her cheeks.  She held the note in a tight grasp to keep her hand from trembling, and sat down.

“He and Mr. Bellairs are going up the Lakes.  They will be back, I imagine, in a week or two.  Perhaps, Bella tells you more.”

In fact, Mr. Percy had been annoyed at not finding Lucia, and slightly discontented at being drawn into an excursion which would take him away from Cacouna.  Only a small time yet remained before he must return to England, and he had been sufficiently conscious that Mrs. Costello would not regret his departure, to be very uncommunicative on the subject.  Bella, however, was much more explicit.

“My dear Lucia,” she said, “shall you be much surprised to hear that these good people have arranged for a certain wedding, in which both you and I are interested, to take place on the first of next month; that is, not quite three weeks from to-day?  How I am to be ready I do not know; but as you are to be bridesmaid, I implore you to come to me either this evening or to-morrow, that we may arrange about the dresses and so on.  Is not it a mercy?  William has taken into his head that he is obliged to go up the Lakes to Sault Ste. Marie, in the interest of some client or other, and has persuaded his cousin to go with him, so that Elise and I will be left in peace for our last few weeks together.  They are to be back about the 26th, and I have done all I could to make Doctor Morton go with them, but he says if he does, the house will not be ready, so, I suppose, he must stay.  They start by this evening’s boat, and as the dearly beloved cousin is sure to go to see you first, I shall ask him to take my note.  Entre nous, I don’t believe he is particularly anxious to go.  And you?  I expect every time I come near the Cottage, I shall hear you singing your mother’s favourite song: 

’Alas!  I scarce can go or creep,
Now Lubin is away.’

Lubin!  What a name!  Mind you come, whatever else you do.  Think of the importance of the subject.  Dresses, my dear, wedding-dresses!

“Ever yours,
“BELLA.”

Lucia read Bella’s effusion hastily through, and gave it to her mother.  Mrs. Costello laughed as she finished it.

“When will you go on this important errand?” she asked.

“Oh! not to-day, mamma, I am tired, and they don’t really want me.  I shall stay with you this afternoon.”

“I have been writing to Mr. Strafford,” Mrs. Costello said after a pause.  “Some time ago I asked him to come up and see us; he could not do so then, but I hope now to be able to persuade him.  I think, too, that the squaw who was here yesterday may be one of his people.  Formerly I knew something of many of them; that might account for her coming.  I have told him of it, and will do nothing until I receive his answer.”

Lucia was silent; she longed to say something, but the conviction that her mother was quite decided in her reticence on the subject of the mystery, which was clearly so painful a one, restrained her.  They dined, and spent the afternoon together without any further allusion to the subject; and Lucia was thankful to perceive that her mother’s tranquillity seemed to have been far less disturbed by this second alarm than it had been by the first.