“Lucia used to come to me every day.  I was ill, and her visits were my great pleasure; she came and talked or read to me, with her mind full all the while of that horrible idea.”

“She knew that it was her father?” asked Maurice.  “I wonder Mrs. Costello, after having kept the truth from Lucia so long, should have told her all just then.”

Bella looked at him inquiringly.

“She had told her before anything of this happened,” she answered.  “I believe Lucia herself was the first to suspect that the prisoner was her father.”

“And how did they find out?”

“Mr. Strafford went and visited him.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“No.  Elise did for a few minutes just before his death; but I have heard so much about him that I can scarcely persuade myself I never did see him.”

“They were both with him at last?”

“Yes.  Poor Lucia never saw him till then.”

“Tell me about it, please.”

She obeyed, and told all that had happened both within her own knowledge and at the jail, on the night of Christian’s death and the day preceding it.  Her calmness was a little shaken when she had to refer to Clarkson’s confession, though she did so very slightly, but she recovered herself and went on with her story, simply repeating for the most part what Lucia and Mrs. Bellairs had told her at the time.  When she had finished, Maurice remained silent.  He had shaded his eyes with his hand, and when, after a minute’s pause, he looked up again to ask her another question, she saw that he had been deeply touched by the picture she had drawn.

But Bella was really doing her friends a double service by thus talking to Maurice.  It was not only that Lucia grew if possible dearer than ever to him from these conversations, but there was something—­though Maurice himself would not have admitted it—­in making Lucia’s father an object of interest and sympathy, instead of leaving him a kind of dark but inevitable blot on the history of the future bride.

On the evening before Mr. Leigh and his son were to start for England, as many as possible of their old friends were gathered together at Mr. Bellairs’ for a farewell meeting.  Every one there had known the Costellos; every one remembered how Maurice and Lucia had been perpetually associated together at all Cacouna parties; every one, therefore, naturally thought of Lucia, and she was more frequently spoken of than she had been at all since she left.  It seemed also to be taken for granted that Maurice would see her somewhere before long, and he was entrusted with innumerable messages both to her and her mother.

“But,” he remonstrated, “you forget that I am going to England, and that they are in France—­at least, that it is supposed so.”

“Oh! yes,” he was answered, “but you will be sure to see them; don’t forget the message when you do.”

At last he gave up making any objection, and determined to believe what everybody said.  It was a pleasant augury, at any rate, and he was glad to accept it for a true one.