There was no need for her to ask any questions about the event of yesterday.  All that was known by every one had been told to Mr. Leigh already by an early visitor, and he, full of horror and sympathy, was able to tell the terrible story over again to a listener, whose deep and agonizing interest in it he never suspected.

But to stay, after the certainty she sought for was obtained; to talk indifferently of other matters; to regulate face and voice so as to show enough, but not too much, of the tumult at her heart, was a task before which Lucia’s courage almost gave way.  Yet it was done.  No impatience betrayed her, no sign of emotion beyond that of natural feeling for others was allowed to escape her; only her hands, which lay quietly clasped together in her lap, gradually tightened and contracted till the pressure of her slight fingers was like that of iron.

At last she was released; and exhausted as if with hard physical exertion, she came back to the Cottage with her news.

There was no need to tell it.  The hopeless look which, when she dared be natural, settled in her eyes, told plainly enough that there was no mistake of identity.  Only one hope remained, and that so feeble that neither dared to acknowledge it in her heart, though she might speak of it as existing—­the hope that after all the prisoner might be innocent.

Mrs. Costello wrote that day to her faithful friend and counsellor, Mr. Strafford.

“I am in a terrible strait,” she said, “and it is to you only in this world that I can look for aid.  My whole life, as you know, has been given to my daughter—­for her I have thought and planned, and in her I have had my daily consolation.  But now I begin to remember that I am not a mother only, but also a wife.  Have I a right to forget it?  Can anything excuse a wife who does so?  Tell me what I ought to do; for if ever I am to think of my husband it must be now.

“Yet it seems to me that, for Lucia’s sake, I must still, if possible, keep my secret.  I long to send her away from me, at this moment, but she has no friends at a distance from Cacouna, and besides, our separation would certainly excite notice.  I might, indeed, send her to England; my cousin, I believe, would receive her for a while; but there, you know, I cannot follow her, and a long parting is more than I have courage to think of.  So I come back to the same point from which I started.  I am almost bewildered by this new wretchedness that has fallen upon us; and I wait for your sympathy and counsel with most impatient eagerness.”

She had not, however, to wait long.  The country post, always irregular, for once favoured her anxiety, and only two days afterwards came a hurried note, bringing the best possible answer.  Mr. Strafford wrote,