so long?"

"I have been at the gate some time," she said. "It is so pleasant out of
doors."

"I went to the top of the lane to look for you a long time ago, and saw
you coming with, I thought, Mr. Percy."

"Yes. He met me. Mamma, I want to tell you something about--"

Mrs. Costello laid down her work.

"What?" she said almost sharply, as something in her child's soft
caressing attitude, and broken words struck her with a new terror.

Lucia slid down to the floor, half kneeling at her mother's feet. "About
myself--and him," she murmured.

Mrs. Costello raised her daughter's face to the light, and looked at it
closely with an almost bitter scrutiny.

"Child," she said, "I thought you would have been safe from this. I did
him injustice, it seems."

A new instinct in Lucia's mind roused her against her mother. She let
her clinging arms fall, and raised her head.

"I do not understand you, mother," she answered, and half rose from
where she had been kneeling.

"Stay, Lucia," and her mother's hand detained her. "I have tried to save
you from suffering. I see now that I have been wrong. But tell me all."

Awed and startled out of the sweet dreams of a few minutes ago, Lucia
tried to obey. She said a few almost unintelligible words, then came to
a sudden pause. She had slipped back again to her old place after her
little burst of anger, and now looked up pleadingly to her mother.

"But, indeed, I don't know how it was," she said; "only it was after
the Indian went away."

Mrs. Costello started. "What Indian?" she asked.

And then the story came out, vivid enough, but broken up as it were by
the newer, sweeter excitement of that other story which she could only
tell in broken words and blushes. As she spoke her eyes were still
raised to her mother's face, looking only for the reflection of her own
terror and thankfulness; but she saw such deadly paleness and rigidity
steal over it, that she started up in dismay.

Mrs. Costello signed to her to wait, and in a moment was again so far
mistress of herself as to be able to say,

"Sit down again. Finish your story, and then describe this man if you
can."

Her voice was forced and husky, but Lucia dared not disobey. She had
only a few words to add, but her description had nothing characteristic
in it, except the utterly degraded and brutal expression of the
countenance, which had so vividly impressed her.

When she ceased speaking, both remained for some minutes