silent and
without moving. Then Mrs. Costello rose, and began to walk slowly up and
down the room. She felt that she had made a mistake in the affair
nearest to her heart. She knew that Lucia had a girl's fancy for Mr.
Percy; he had done all he could to awaken it, and it was not likely that
the poor child would have been entirely untouched by his efforts; but
she had believed that it was only for the amusement of his leisure that
he had been so perseveringly blind to her own coldness, and that he was
too thoroughly selfish to be guilty of such an imprudence as she now saw
had been committed. That Lucia could ever be his wife, she knew was
utterly impossible. She had thought that the worst which could happen,
was that when he had left Cacouna his memory would have to be slowly and
painfully eradicated from her heart, but now it had become needful to
cause this beloved child a double share of the trouble, which she had so
dreaded for her. All these thoughts, and with them the idea of an added
horror overhanging herself, seemed to press upon her brain with
unendurable weight. Yet, suffer as she might, time must not be suffered
to pass. Night was advancing, and before morning Lucia must know all the
story, which once told, would shadow her life, and throw her new-born
happiness out of her very recollection.

She stopped at last in her restless walk. She went up to the chair where
Lucia sat, and putting her arms round her, kissed her forehead.

"You are very happy, my child?" she said tenderly.

"Mamma, I don't know. I _was_ happy."

"You will be again--not yet, but later. Try to believe that, for it is
time you should share my secret and my burden, and they are terrible for
you now."

CHAPTER IX.

"You will be happy again!" Did any one of us in the first dull pain of a
new, inexplicable suffering, ever believe such words as those? Lucia
read her mother's face, tone, gestures too well to doubt that she
regarded this long-kept secret as something which must separate her from
Percy--must separate her, she therefore fancied, from all that was best
and sweetest in life. It was hard that she should have been suffered to
taste happiness, if it was instantly to be snatched from her. She felt
this half resentfully, shrinking into herself, and cowering before the
unknown trial, which, when fully understood, her natural courage would
enable to meet with energy. She sat with her head resting on her hands,
while Mrs. Cos