A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2

d his cousin came to Hunsdon still oftener, so that in the course of

ent, and more than content, to drop into the shade, and let Lady Dighton act for both; so that Maurice, like the rest of the world (always excepti

bout the distant colony as English people generally do; but she had considerable curiosity as to Maurice's past life; and in her benevolent efforts to improv

t, je suis

rly thoughts of one fair young Canadian girl were inseparably joined to the very roots of every good quality he possessed. This ignorance did not at all arise from want of interest. Her feminine imagination, naturally fertile on such subjects, soon began to occupy itself with speculations in which every eligible young lady in the country figured in turn. It was not to be supposed that the heir of Hunsdon would find much difficulty in obtaining a wife;

of her own and Lucia's removal as a thing quite settled, though not immediate, and left the place of their destination altogether uncertain. These letters threw Maurice into a condition of discomfort and impatience, which he found hard to bear. He was extremely uneasy at the idea of his father being left without companion or nurse. This uneasiness formed, as it were, the background of his thoughts, while a variety of less reasonable, but more vivid, anxieties held a complete revel in the foreground. He had not even his old refuge against troublesome fancies; f

but never speaking of it, that he made up his mind to take his cousin to some degree into his confidence. To some degree only-it could be a very small degree indeed, according to his ideas, for he could not tell her all, even of the little he knew, about the Costellos, a

ly occur Maurice let it slip, so that time passed on, and nothing was said; until at last

at all was well, and then to read the other; but the news upon which his eye fell, put everything else for the moment out of his head. He glanced half incredulously over what his father said, and then tore open the newspaper to seek for its confirmation. He had not far to seek. Two c

g the most fearful realities of life and death so near to him, faded away almost out of his r

eep for myself the consolation of thinking that my darling would some day be safe in your care, and that this consolation has been torn from me. But what can I say to you? My dear boy, only less dear to me than Lucia, I know you will, you must, blame me, and yet it is for your sake and for that of my own honour that I separate you from us. You have a right that I should say more, hard as it is. My daughter, whom you have known almost all her innocent life, would, if you married her, bring, through those most n

ork, and yet when Maurice rose from his solitary breakfast-table, and carried his letters away to his own room, although he looked and moved, and even spoke to a passing servant just as usual, he felt as if he had been suddenly paralysed, and struck down from vigorous life into the shadow of death. He sat in his room and tried to think, but no thoughts came; only a perpetual reiteration of the words, "You and Lucia must not meet again." Over and over, and over again, the same still incomprehensible sentence kept ringing in his ears. It was much the same thing as if some power had said to him, "You must put away from you, divorce, and utterly forget, all your past life; all your nature, as it has grown up, to this present time; and take a different individualit

f a Spaniard, and that her husband had died when Lucia was an infant, but how to make any of these scanty details bear upon the fact that now, lately, since he himself had left Cacouna, something had happened, either unforeseen, or only partly foreseen by Mrs. Costello, which brought disgrace and misery upon her and her child, he did not in the least understand. Personal disgrace, the shadow of actual ill-doing, resting upon either mother or daughter, was too utterly improbable a thought ever even to enter his mind; but what the trouble could be, or w

had to attend his grandfather in the library. Even when he did so, however, he found it impossible to force his thoughts into any other channel, and his brain worked all day painfully and fruit