I wished for you, you will find, at
any rate, that a single woman's life may be full of usefulness and
honour."

Ah! that brighter fate! Mrs. Costello thought of Maurice, and sighed for
the loss to _two_ lives. Lucia's heart still turned loyally to the one
lover who had claimed it, but both knew that the "brighter fate" was no
longer a possibility now.

CHAPTER XII.

Lucia walked with her mother to the gates of the jail, but she could not
obtain permission to go any further. Although the proposal to send her
to England was, in fact, abandoned, there seemed no reason why she
should be brought sooner than was needful into contact with what could
not but be painful; and she was obliged to yield in this matter to her
mother's judgment.

They parted, therefore, at the gates; and Mrs. Costello was admitted
without delay to the cell where Christian was confined. A cell, properly
speaking, it was not; for they had removed him since her former visit,
and he now occupied a good-sized room on the upper floor, which was
nearly as bare and as glaringly white as the other, but more airy. His
low wooden bedstead was drawn near to the window, which, cold as it was,
stood open, while a small box-stove, heated almost red hot, kept the
temperature of the room tolerably high. On the bed, partly dressed, and
wrapped in a blanket, lay the prisoner. He neither moved nor paid any
attention when his visitor came in, and she had time to see all the
change confinement and illness had made in him. And the change was,
indeed, startling. All the flush of intemperance had left his face, and
at this moment his fever had subsided also, and left him only the
natural dark but clear tint of his Indian blood; his hair had been
smoothly combed, and looked less grey than when it hung tangled and
knotted; his extreme weakness gave him an aspect of repose, which
brought back the ghost of his old self--something of the look of that
Christian who had been, to a girl's fancy, so fit a hero of romance.

It was but a likeness, truly, shadowy and dim, but it seemed to bridge
over the interval--the long, long weary years since the hero changed
into the tyrant, and to make far easier that task of comforting and
helping which duty, and not love, had imposed.

She came to his side, and still he did not notice her. His eyes were
fixed on the pale, grey, snowy sky, and he seemed deaf to the slight
sounds of her movements. She sat down and watched him silent