“I think I have.  Dear Mrs. Costello, have some consideration for me.  Was it right when I was kept a fast prisoner by my poor grandfather’s sick-bed, when I was trusting to you, and doing all I could to make you to trust me—­was it fair to break faith with me, and try to deprive me of all the hopes I had in the world?  Just think of it—­was it fair?”

“I broke no faith with you.  I felt that I had let you pledge yourself in the dark; that in my care for Lucia, and confidence in you, I had to some extent bound you to a discreditable engagement.  I released you from it; I told you the truth of the story I had hidden from everybody—­I wrote to you when my husband lay in jail waiting his trial for murder, and I heard no more from you.  It was natural, prudent, right that you should accept the separation I desired—­you did so, and I have only taken means to make it effectual.”

“I did so!  I accepted the separation?”

“I supposed, at least, from your silence that you did so.  Was not I right therefore in desiring that you and Lucia should not meet again?”

“That was it, then?  Listen, Mrs. Costello.  My last note to you seems by some means to have been lost.  There was nothing new in it; but my father has told me that he was surprised on receiving my letter which ought to have contained it, to find nothing for you, not even a message; perhaps you wondered too.  I can only tell you the note was written.  Then, in my next letter, written when my grandfather was actually dying, and when I was, I confess, very angry that you should persist in trying to shake me off, there was a message to you in a postscript which my father overlooked, and which I myself showed to him for the first time when I reached home and found you gone.  What he had been thinking, Heaven knows.  I had rather not inquire too closely; but I will say that it is rather hard to find that the people who ought to know one best, cannot trust one for six months.”

Mrs. Costello listened attentively while Maurice made his explanation with no little warmth and indignation.

“Do you mean to say that you did not perceive how foolish and wrong it had become for you to think of marrying Lucia?”

“How in the world could it be either foolish or wrong for me to wish to marry the girl I have loved all my life?  Unless, indeed, she preferred somebody else.”

“Remember who she is.”

“I am not likely to forget that after all I have lately heard about her from Mrs. Morton.”

“And that you have a family and a position to think of now.”

“And a home fit to offer to Lucia.”

“Obstinate boy!”

“Call me what you will, but let it be understood that I have done nothing to forfeit your promise.  I am to take no further answers except from Lucia.”

“But you know, at least, that our worst fears were unfounded?”

“Of course they were.  I always knew that would come right.  But you have suffered terribly; I am ashamed of my own selfishness when I think of it.”