“Yes; it has been the wish of my heart for years.  Maurice is like a son to me.”

They discussed the matter in its more commonplace aspect.  The wealth and position of the bridegroom elect were points as to which Mr. Wynter felt it his business to inquire, and when he found these so satisfactory, he congratulated his cousin with great cordiality, and plainly expressed his opinion that delays in such a case were useless and objectionable.  He liked Lucia, and admired her, and thought, too, that there would be no better way of blotting out the remembrance of the mother’s unfortunate marriage than by a prosperous one on the part of the daughter.

Meantime Mrs. Wynter sat in an easy-chair by her dressing-table, and her daughter was curled up on the floor near her.

“Well, mamma,” Miss Wynter said, “you see I was right.  I knew perfectly well that there must be some romance at the bottom of it all.”

“You were very wise, my dear.”

“And, mamma, if I had seen Lucia, I should have been still more sure.  Why, she is perfectly lovely!  I hope she will let me be her bridesmaid.”

“Tiny, you know I don’t approve of your talking in that way.”

“What way, mamma?  Of course, they are going to be married.  Anybody can see that.”

“If they are, no doubt we shall hear in good time.”

“And I am sure, if either of us were to marry half as well, the whole house would be in a flutter.  I mean to be very good friends with Lucia, and then, perhaps, she will invite me to go and see her.  And I must be her bridesmaid, because I am her nearest relation; and she can’t have any friends in England, and I shall make her let me have a white dress with blue ribbons.”

Mrs. Wynter still reproved, but she smiled, too; and Tiny being a spoiled child, needed no greater encouragement.  She stopped in her mother’s room until she heard Mr. Wynter coming, when she fled, dishevelled, to her own, and dropped asleep, to dream of following Lucia up the aisle of an impossible church, dressed in white with ribbons of bleu de ciel.

Lucia perhaps had said to herself also that she meant to be good friends with Tiny.  At all events, the two girls did get on excellently together; before the week which the Wynters spent in London was at an end, they had discussed as much of Lucia’s love story as she was disposed to tell, and arranged that Tiny and her sister should really officiate on that occasion to which everybody’s thoughts were now beginning to be directed.

Another week found the Costellos at Dighton.  They meant to stay a fortnight or three weeks, and then to return to town until the marriage; but of this no one of their Norfolk friends would hear a word.  Lady Dighton, Maurice, and Mr. Leigh had made up their minds that Lucia should not leave the county until she did so a bride; and they carried their point.  The wedding-day was fixed; and Lucia found herself left, at last, almost without a voice in the decision of her own destiny.