r the hand that had been softly laid on her shoulder.
Mrs. Costello drew back; she returned to her chair, and sat down to
wait, but the long deep sigh which unconsciously escaped her, as she did
so, reached Lucia's heart. A strong impulse of love and pity seemed to
break through all her misery; she felt that, at least, she did not
suffer alone, and with a quick self-reproach she threw herself at her
mother's feet, and encircled her waist with her arms. For a moment
neither spoke. They held each other fast, and one, at least, thanked God
silently that the most bitter pang was averted, since they could still
so cling to each other.

But after a while, Mrs. Costello said, "I have much to tell you, my
child. Can you bear to hear it now?"

"Yes, mother. I must know all now."

Lucia rose, and bringing a footstool, sat down in her old childish
attitude at her mother's feet; only that her face, which was worn and
pale, was quite hidden.

"I am ready," she said. "Explain all I cannot understand."

No human being, perhaps, could tell his or her own story with perfect
truth; still less could tell it so to the hearer the most passionately
loved, and whose love seems to hang in the balance. It would be apt to
be a piece of special pleading, for or against, as egotism or conscience
happened to be strongest. Best, then, not to try to reproduce the words
spoken that night--spoken in the tuneless, level voice, which, in its
dull monotony, is a truer indication of pain than any other; but to
repeat only the substance of all that Lucia then heard for the first
time.

To her, the old house by the Dee was already familiar ground; she knew,
dimly, the figure of a lady who died there in her youth, and left a
desolate child, well cared for, but little loved, to grow up alone; and
she knew, more familiarly, but with a sense of awe which was almost
dislike, the child's father, her own grandfather, a man saddened,
silent, unsympathetic. These, and various relations and servants who had
surrounded her mother in her childhood, she had already heard of a
thousand times. The story, new to her, began in Mary Wynter's fifteenth
year.

At that time Mr. Wynter's family consisted of four persons--himself,
his daughter, her governess, and a nephew, George Wynter, who was, in
fact, an adopted son. The governess had been lately and hastily added to
the household, on the discovery of Mary's amazing ignorance; and her
selection had been a mistake. She