But when Mrs. Costello was alone, she began to think of Maurice.  She felt, even before she began to think, that something which had been a stay and prop to her hitherto had suddenly been snatched away, and she had now to realize that this support was her confidence in him.  For a long time she had grown accustomed to rest upon the idea that a safe and honourable future was secured for her child, and this had made present trials and difficulties endurable.  She had seen Percy’s courtship with bitter disappointment, although she had miscalculated its issue, and through all her sympathy with Lucia, she had secretly rejoiced at his dismissal; she had felt no scruples in hearing from Maurice, at the very moment when his prospects had suddenly changed and brightened, the assurance of his attachment, and she had received his note that very day with a joy which almost resembled that which a girl feels who hears from his own lips that her absent lover is faithful to her.  To this mother, cut off from every tie but that of motherhood, her child was the one only absorbing interest; she had loved Maurice, but she knew now that she had loved him chiefly as the representative of Lucia’s future safety and happiness.  It had never occurred to her that her own strange marriage, that the race or the character of her husband, which had been recognized by both mother and daughter as insuperable obstacles in Percy’s case, would estrange the nobler and truer nature.  The whole miserable story would have to be told, she had thought, when the time came, but she had neither feared its effect on Maurice nor felt any compunction at the idea of his carrying into an honourable family a wife whose parentage was her terror and disgrace.

But now that the disgrace had grown immeasurably darker, now that her story might have to be told, not privately and with extenuation, but in coarse hard words, and to the whole of the little world that knew her; now that every one who would, might be able to point at her as the daughter of a murderer,—­how would it be?

With the feeling that at length she was indeed left alone and helpless, Mrs. Costello put from her the last fragment of her dream.  There was still, it is true, the want of positive knowledge that Christian was the criminal, but in her own heart she had already accepted the evidence against him, and it seemed to her that all which remained to be done with regard to Maurice was to write and tell him, not all the truth—­there was no need for that, and he might hear it soon enough from other sources—­but that the hopes they had both indulged in had deceived them, and must be laid aside and forgotten.

And when her long meditation came to an end, she said softly to herself,

“Thank God, she does not know.  And I have been ready to complain of the very unconsciousness which has saved her this!”

Mr. Leigh was surprised, as Lucia had expected, when she went next day, just as usual, to pay him her morning visit.  He was easily satisfied, however, with the slight reasons she gave him for their delay, and glad of anything that kept them still at the Cottage.