There had been a long silence; for, after Mrs. Costello had told her story, there was enough to occupy the thoughts of all, and after a while each feared to break upon the other’s reverie.  And as it happened, the meditations of the two elder people had turned in almost the same direction, though they were guided by a different knowledge of circumstances.  Mrs. Costello knew that to be true which Mr. Strafford only vaguely feared; she was thoroughly aware of the precarious hold she had on life, and how each fresh shock, whether of joy or sorrow, hastened the end.  Her one anxiety was for Lucia, and the safe disposal of her future.  She told herself often that her cares were exaggerated, but they would stay with her nevertheless, and rather seemed to grow in intensity with every change that occurred.  But to-night, certainly, a gleam of the hope which she had of late, so carefully shut out, again crossed her mind.  How great a change had come since morning, since last night, when she wrote that final decisive letter to Maurice!  It was already on its way to England, she knew, for it chanced to be the very time for the mail starting; and there would be an interval of a week between its arrival and that of any later intelligence.  For a week Maurice would believe Lucia’s father to be a murderer, and if then, in spite of all, he remained faithful to his old love, would he not have an unanswerable right to claim her—­would there be any excuse for denying his claim since her father was proved to be innocent?  The belief that he would be faithful was, after all, strong in Mrs. Costello’s mind; she who had known Maurice all his life knew perfectly that no considerations, which had himself in any way for their object, would have the smallest weight with him against his love, or even against what he chose to consider his honour.

Her face unconsciously brightened while she thought over all these things, and suffered herself again to dwell on her old favourite idea without being in the least doubtful as to Lucia’s final consent.  Yet while she thus laid the foundation for new castles in the air, Lucia herself was busy with thoughts and recollections not too favourable to her mother’s plans.

Percy, not Maurice, filled her mind.  She went back, in her fancies, to the night when he had told her she must go with him to England, and she had been so happy and so ignorant of all that was to separate them.  Then she thought of the next day, and how she had sent him away, and told him that it would disgrace him to marry her.  Somehow the disgrace which had weighed so heavily on her then seemed marvellously light now, since she had known one so much deeper; and in the blessed sense of freedom which came to her through Clarkson’s confession, she was ready to think that all else was of small consequence.  Did not girls marry every day whose fathers were all that her father had been?  Ah, not all; there was always that Indian blood, which, though