hey were unable to do more than seem to accept her
assurances. But to Lucia, when, with a tenderness which seemed to have
grown both deeper and more fitful, she would implore to be told the
cause of such evident suffering, Mrs. Costello gave a different answer.

"I have told our friends the truth," she said; "I am not ill in body,
but a little anxious and disturbed in mind. Have patience for a while,
my darling, the time for you to share all my thoughts is, I fear, not
far distant."

So Lucia waited, too full of life and happiness herself to be much
troubled even by the shadow resting on her mother, and growing daily
more absorbed in a strange new delight of her own--seeing all things
through a new medium, and filling her heart too full of the joy of the
present, to leave room in it for one grave fear of the future.

Wonderful alchemy of the imagination, which can draw from a nature
ignoble, and altogether earthly, nourishment for dreams so sweet and so
sunny! Lucia's fancy had made for her a picture, such as most girls make
for themselves once in their lives, and the portrait was as unfaithful
as the original himself could have desired. Mr. Percy had become almost
a daily visitor at the Cottage. Attracted by Lucia's beauty, he came, as
he would have said, had he spoken frankly, to amuse himself during a
dull visit, with no thought but that of entertaining himself and her for
the moment. But, in fact, the magnet had more power over him than he
knew; he came, because, without a much stronger effort of self-denial
than was possible to him, he could not stay away. And though he thought
himself free, Lucia had in her heart an unacknowledged sense of power
over him; the old ability to torment, which she had so often exercised
on Maurice in mere girlish playfulness. Once or twice she had purposely
exerted this power over her new acquaintance, but not with her old
carelessness; too deeply interested in the question of how far it
extended, she used it with trembling as a dangerous instrument which
might fail, and wound her in its recoil. But as days passed on, and each
one brought him to the Cottage, or found Lucia with Mrs. Bellairs, and
therefore in his society, it began to seem incredible that his coming
was an event of only a few weeks ago; the past seemed to have receded,
and this present, so bright and perfect, to be all her life. Yet, in
truth, she had no notion of anatomizing her thoughts or feelings. They
had come to