ed by Maurice's.

"I am glad to see you, at any rate," she said, "now you _are_ here; but"
she added seriously, "you must not forget, nor try to tempt me to
forget, that we are all changed since we met last."

"I do not wish it. I don't wish to forget anything that is true and
real, and I wish to remind you that when I left Canada I did so with a
promise--an implied promise at any rate--from you, which has not been
kept."

"Maurice! Have you a right to speak to me so?"

"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 wh