any one I chose
to bring with me should see him, and therefore there need be no gossip
or surprise at your mother going, first of all."

There was no more to be said; and each of the three was glad to let the
conversation drop and try to turn their thoughts to other and less
painfully absorbing subjects. But to mother and daughter all other
subjects were but empty words; memory in the former, and imagination in
the latter were busy perpetually with that one who, by the laws of God
and man, ought to have been the third at their fireside--who had been
for years a vagrant and an outcast, and was now the inmate of a
murderer's cell. Innocent perhaps--and it was strange how that
possibility seemed slowly but surely to grow in both their minds;
shadowing over, and promising by-and-by to dim in their remembrance the
hideous recollections of the past.

Mr. Strafford's words had thus already begun to bear fruit. As for
himself, the doubt he had expressed was merely a doubt--a matter of
speculation, not of feeling. Still, while it remained in his mind, it
was a sufficient reason for using every possible means of discovering
the truth, and scarcely needed the additional impulse given by his warm
regard for Mrs. Costello and Lucia, to induce him to devote himself, as
far as his other duties would allow, to the unfortunate Christian. He
was anxious to bring the long separated husband and wife together, not
merely for the reason he had spoken of, but because he thought that if
their meetings promised comfort or benefit to the prisoner, it would be
his wife's duty to continue them; while if they proved useless, she
might be released from all obligation to remain at Cacouna.

CHAPTER VI.

The change which had taken place in the fortunes of Maurice Leigh was
one that might have dazzled him a little, if he had not had a strong
counteracting influence in the thought of all he had left in Canada. He
found himself, without hesitation or difficulty, but with a suddenness
which was like the transformations in a fairy tale, changed from a
Backwoods farmer's son into an important member of an old and wealthy
family. Only the other day he had been working hard and holding up to
himself as the reward of his work, the hope of becoming a successful
provincial lawyer; now he was the heir, and all but the actual
possessor, of a splendid fortune and an estate which gave him a foremost
place among English country gentlemen.

His arrival