for Mr. Wynter's answer, even if it were
satisfactory, would have to be sent to Hunsdon, and there wait his
arrival, while Mrs. Costello would have plenty of time to hear of his
application, and to baffle him if she wished to do so. He quickly
decided, therefore, to do nothing until he could go himself to Chester,
and from thence direct to the place, wherever that might be, where Lucia
was to be found.
Mr. Leigh's day, meanwhile, had been far less comfortable than
Maurice's. He had made a pretence of looking over papers, and arranging
various small affairs in readiness for their voyage, but his mind all
the while had been occupied with two or three questions. Had Maurice
really sent to him a note for Mrs. Costello which by any carelessness of
his had been lost? Had the change he remembered in her manner been
connected with the loss? Had Lucia cared for Maurice? Had either mother
or daughter thought so ill of Maurice as he, his own father, had done?
The poor old man tormented himself, much as a woman might have done,
with these speculations, but he dared not breathe a word of them. He
even went so far in his self-accusations and self-disgust as to imagine
that if he had been his son's faithful helper, he might have prevented
that flight from the Cottage which had caused so much trouble and
vexation.
Still, when Maurice came home full of energy and hope, and anxious to
atone for his unreasonableness of the previous day, the aspect of
affairs brightened a good deal, and the evening passed happily with
both.
But after that first day a certain amount of disturbance began to be
felt in the household. People came and went perpetually. There was so
much to be done, and so little time to do it in; and there was not only
the actual business of moving, but innumerable claims from old friends
were made upon Maurice, all of which had to be satisfied one way or
other.
And the days flew by so quickly. Maurice congratulated himself again and
again on having provided so good a reason for leaving Cacouna at a
certain time. "Our berths are taken," was a conclusive answer to all
proposals of delay; and if it had not been for that, he often thought it
would have been impossible to have held to his purpose. But as it was,
all engagements, whatever they might be, had to be pressed into the
short space of a fortnight, and under the double impulse of Maurice's
own energies, and of that irrevocable _must_, things went on fast and
prosp
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