A Canadian Heroine. Mrs. Harry Coghill

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      "And you would have waited patiently for him?"

      "Patiently? I don't know. Certainly I should have waited, for no one but a stranger would have asked me to dance."

      "I hope, however, you forgive me."

      They had reached Mrs. Bellair's, and she only answered by a smile as she sat down. A minute after, she was carried off by another partner, and Mr. Percy took possession of the vacant place.

      The evening passed on. At the end of it, Mr. Percy, shut up in his own room, surprised himself in the midst of a reverie the subject of which was Lucia Costello; he actually found himself comparing her with a certain Lady Adeliza Weymouth, of whom he had been supposed to be épris the season before. But then Lady Adeliza had no particular claim to beauty; she was "distinguished" and of a powerful family; as for Lucia, on the other hand, she was——There! it was no use going off into that question. A great deal more sense to go to bed.

      Meantime Lucia, under Maurice's escort, was on her way home. They had started, talking gaily enough, but before half the distance was passed they grew silent.

      After a long pause Maurice asked, "Are you very tired?"

      Lucia's meditation had carried her so far away that she started at the sound of his voice.

      "Tired? oh, no! At least not very much."

      "And you have enjoyed the day after all?"

      "Pretty well. Not much, I think."

      "I thought you looked happy enough this evening. Come, confess you are glad you did not stay at home."

      "Indeed, I will not; mamma, I am sure, wished me to stay?"

      "Yet she made you come."

      "Yes, because she thought I wanted to do so. Maurice, do you think she looks ill?"

      "No, I have not noticed it. Does she complain?"

      "Mamma complain! A thing she never does. But it seems to me that something is different. I can't tell what. She goes out less than ever, and seems to dislike my leaving her." Lucia longed to say, "She has some trouble; some heavy anxiety; can you guess what it is?" but she had an instinctive consciousness, that even to this dear and tried friend, she ought not to speak of a subject on which Mrs. Costello was invariably silent. Even to herself, a certain darkness hung over her mother's past life; there were years of it of which she felt utterly ignorant. Whatever was the cloud of the present, it might be connected with the recollections of those years; this thought checked her even while she spoke.

      Whether Maurice had any similar reason for reticence or not, he only said, "I do not think she would hide anything from you which need give you uneasiness. I advise you not to torment yourself causelessly."

      "I am not tormenting myself; but I think yours is a miserable plan. You would have people feel no sympathy for the troubles of others, unless they can be paraded in so many words."

      "Decidedly you must be very tired, or you would take the trouble to understand me better."

      He put down his whip, to draw her cloak more closely round her, for the dewy night air was chill, but she pushed it away.

      "I am quite warm, thank you. How long the road seems to-night! Shall we ever be at home?"

      "We are almost there. See, that is your own acacia-tree."

      "I am so glad. Don't turn up the lane. I can run up there perfectly well by myself."

      "Indeed you will not. Sit still, if you please."

      "How tiresome you are, Maurice! You treat me just as if I were a baby."

      "Do I? A bad habit, I suppose. I will try to cure myself."

      His tone was so quiet, so free from either ridicule or anger, that she grew more impatient still.

      "Now pray do let me get out. I can see Mr. Leigh's light burning still, as well as mamma's. They must both be tired of waiting. Why does your father always sit up for you, Maurice? Is he afraid to trust you?"

      "Lucia!" His tone was angry now, and silenced her. In another minute they stopped at the gate of the cottage.

      Mrs. Costello had heard the sound of their wheels, and instantly opened the door. Lucia's half-formed intention of making some kind of apology for her petulance, had no time to ripen. Maurice helped her down without speaking, bade her good night, exchanged a word or two with her mother, and drove slowly away again.

      Mother and daughter went in together to Lucia's room; but Mrs. Costello, noticing that her child looked pale and weary, left her almost immediately. Lucia instantly flew to the window. The farmhouse where Mr. Leigh and Maurice lived was so near that the lights in its different windows could be plainly distinguished. After a moment, the one which had been burning steadily as they passed the house, flickered suddenly, disappeared, and then, shone more brightly through the opening door.

      "He is at home," said Lucia to herself. "Poor Maurice, how good he is! What on earth made me so cross?"

      She continued to watch. Presently the light which had returned to the sitting-room vanished altogether, and a fainter gleam stole out from what she knew to be the window of Maurice's room. She said "Good-night" softly, as if he could hear her, dropped her curtain, and was soon fast asleep.

      That night Mrs. Costello's lamp was extinguished long before Maurice's. Tired and dispirited, he had seated himself before his little writing-table, and given himself up to a dream of no pleasant kind. It was so completely the habit of his life to think of Lucia that it would have been strange if her image had not been prominent in his meditations; but to-night for the first time he tried to get rid of this image. He was used to her whims and changing moods, to her waywardness and occasional tyranny. When he was a boy they had often quarrelled, and taxed the efforts of his sister Alice, Lucia's inseparable friend, to reconcile them; but since his long absence at college, and, above all, since Alice's death, they had ceased to torment each other. The relations of master and pupil had been added to those of playfellows, and their intercourse had run on so smoothly that until to-night Maurice had never known his charge's full power to irritate him. Like most persons of steady and equable temperament, he felt deeply annoyed, even humiliated, by having been surprised into impatience and anger; he was doubly displeased with himself and with Lucia. Yet, as he thought of her his mood softened; she was only a child, and would be good to-morrow. But then she could not always be a child—a girl of sixteen ought to be beginning to be reasonable; and then she did not look such a child. He had been struck by that idea at one particular moment of this very evening. It was when he had returned to the ball-room at the close of the first quadrille, and had met Lucia walking up the room with Mr. Percy. They had been talking together with animation; Lucia was a little flushed, and looking more lovely than usual. Mr. Percy, for his part, appeared to have forgotten his cool, almost supercilious manner, and to be occupied more with her than with himself.

      Maurice felt his cheek grow red as he recalled the picture. He moved impatiently, and in doing so, displaced some loose papers, which slipped to the ground. In stooping to gather them up, his hand touched a dead flower, which had fallen with them. It was Lucia's rose. He was just about to throw it down again, when his hand stopped. "She spoke of something different," he muttered; "are the old times coming to an end, I wonder? Times must change, I suppose." He sighed, and instead of throwing the СКАЧАТЬ