"What does this mean, Lucia?" Mrs. Costello asked in a tone which she had never in her life used to her daughter before. "Are you out of your senses?"
Lucia was silent. She could almost have said yes.
"You know of course that Maurice is gone?"
"Yes I know it," she answered just audibly.
"Nothing! That is absurd. Why did he wish to see you alone to-day?"
"To tell _me_ something," Lucia said with a little flash of opposition awakened by her mother's anger.
"Yes--I thought so. To tell you something which, to any girl in the world who was not inconceivably blind or inconceivably vain, would have been the best news she ever heard in her life. And you said _nothing_?"
"So he says--he, who is not much in the habit of talking nonsense, says this to me. Just listen. 'We have both made the mistake of reasoning about a thing with which reason has nothing to do. I see the error now too late for myself, but not, I hope, too late to leave her in peace. Pray do not speak to her about it at all.' But it is my duty to speak."
"Mamma, Maurice is right. It is too late."
"It is not too late for him to get some little justice; and it is not too late for you to know what you have lost."
"Oh! I do know," she cried out. "But even if there had been no other reason, how could I have been different? He never told me till to-day." And she clasped her two hands together on the edge of the table and hid her face on them.
Mrs. Costello leaned a little more forward, and touched her daughter's arm.
"I must speak to you about this, Lucia," she said. "I do not want to be harsh, but you ought to know what you have done. And, good heavens! for what? A stranger, a mere coxcomb comes in your way, and you listen to his fine words, and straight begin to be able to see nothing but him, though the most faithful, generous heart a girl ever had offered to her is in your very hand! _I_ was bad enough--but I had no such love as Maurice's to leave behind me."
Again Lucia moved, without speaking. As she did so, the ring on her hand flashed.
"What is that on your finger?" Mrs. Costello asked.
"Maurice's ring. _He_ was not so hard on me."
"Hard?" Mrs. Costello was pressing her hand more and more tightly to her side. "Child, it is you that have been hard with your unconscious ways."