face had a weary, worn-out look, and the hand that
lay listlessly on the arm of her chair was terribly thin. Those fainting
fits, too, of which Lucia had told him, and the one which she had had
that day, were alarming. He knew the steady self-command which she had
been used to exert in the miseries of her married life, and judged that
her long endurance must have weakened her physical powers no little
before she was so far conquered by emotion. He consoled himself,
however, with the idea that her sufferings must be now nearly at an end,
and that she was so young still that she could only need rest and
happiness to recover. He said this to himself, and yet meantime he
watched her uneasily, and did not feel at all so sure of her recovery as
he tried to persuade himself he did.

There had been a long silence; for, after Mrs. Costello had told her
story, there was enough to occupy the thoughts of all, and after a while
each feared to break upon the other's reverie. And as it happened, the
meditations of the two elder people had turned in almost the same
direction, though they were guided by a different knowledge of
circumstances. Mrs. Costello knew that to be true which Mr. Strafford
only vaguely feared; she was thoroughly aware of the precarious hold she
had on life, and how each fresh shock, whether of joy or sorrow,
hastened the end. Her one anxiety was for Lucia, and the safe disposal
of her future. She told herself often that her cares were exaggerated,
but they would stay with her nevertheless, and rather seemed to grow in
intensity with every change that occurred. But to-night, certainly, a
gleam of the hope which she had of late, so carefully shut out, again
crossed her mind. How great a change had come since morning, since last
night, when she wrote that final decisive letter to Maurice! It was
already on its way to England, she knew, for it chanced to be the very
time for the mail starting; and there would be an interval of a week
between its arrival and that of any later intelligence. For a week
Maurice would believe Lucia's father to be a murderer, and if _then_, in
spite of all, he remained faithful to his old love, would he not have an
unanswerable right to claim her--would there be any excuse for denying
his claim since her father was proved to be innocent? The belief that he
would be faithful was, after all, strong in Mrs. Costello's mind; she
who had known Maurice all his life knew perfectly that no
consid