"That depends entirely on the sort of cold. Yes; I think we should settle in Paris for a time, and then move into the country. Only I have a great fancy not to be more than a day's journey from England."

"In which I sympathize with you. It will be very much more satisfactory to me to know that you are within a reasonable distance of us."

Lucia sat and listened very contentedly to the talk of the elder people.

To her, whose only experience of relationship, beyond her mother, was painful and mortifying, there was something she had not anticipated of novelty and comfort in this new state of affairs. Her cousin's tone of kinsmanship and friendliness was so genuine and unforced that she and her mother both accepted it naturally, and forgot for the moment that, to a little-minded man, such friendliness might have been difficult and perhaps impossible.

They decided to start for Paris next morning, Mr. Wynter saying that he had arranged for a week's absence from England, and therefore would have plenty of time to see them fixed in their new residence before he left.

Then the conversation glided to other subjects, and Lucia losing her interest in it, began to wonder where Percy was--whether they were again on the same continent--whether he would hear, through the Bellairs, of their movements--whether he thought of her. And from that point she went off in some indescribable maze of dreams, recollections, and wishes, through which there came, as if from a distance, the sound of voices talking about England--about Chester--about her mother's old home and old friends--and about her young cousins, the Wynters, and a visit they were to make to France when spring should have set in.

In the midst of all, the sound of a great clock striking broke the stillness of the snowy streets, and, just after, a party of men passed, singing a clamorous French song, and stamping an accompaniment with their heavy shoes. Lucia smiled as she listened, and then sighed. In truth this was a new life, into which nothing of the old one could come except love and memory.

Of course, they could not sleep that night. They missed the motion of the ship, which had lately lulled them; they could not shake off the impression of strangeness and feel sufficiently at home to forget themselves; and to Lucia, used to the healthy sleep of eighteen, this was a much more serious matter than to one who had kept as many vigils as Mrs. Costello. They appeared, therefore, in the morning to have changed characters; Lucia was pale and tired, Mrs. Costello seemed bright and refreshed.

The rapid and uneventful journey to Paris ended, for the present, their wanderings. When, on the following day, they started out in search of apartments, Mrs. Costello looked round her in astonishment. More than twenty years ago she had really known something of the city; now there only seemed to be, here and there, an old landmark left to prove that it was not altogether a new and strange place. Lucia was delighted with everything. She no sooner saw the long line of the Champs Elysees than she declared that there, and nowhere else, their rooms must be found.

"In the city, mamma," she said, "you could not breathe; and as for sleeping, you know what it was last night; and if we went further out, we should see nothing."

Mrs. Costello was too pleased to see her daughter looking and speaking with something of her old liveliness to be inclined to oppose her fancies, only she said with a smile,

"The Champs Elysees is expensive--remember that, Lucia--and I am going to make you keeper of the purse."

"Very well, mamma, if it is too dear, of course there is no more to be said; but you don't object to our trying to get something here, do you?"

"Decidedly not. Let us try by all means."

They found apartments readily enough; but to find any suited to their means was, as Mrs. Costello anticipated, anything but an easy matter.

Lucia began, before the morning was over, to realize the fact that their 400 a year, which had been a perfectly comfortable income in Canada, would require very careful management to afford them at all a suitable living in Paris.

"It is only for a little while, though," she consoled herself. "In summer we shall be able to go into the country and find something much cheaper."

So they continued their search, and at last found just what they wanted; though to do so, they had to mount so many stairs that Lucia was afraid her mother would be exhausted.

"I do not think this will do, mamma," she said. "I should never dare to ask you to go out, because when you came in tired, you would have all this fatigue."

But the rooms were comfortable and airy, and the difficulties of living "au cinquieme" were considered on the whole to be surmountable; so the affair was settled. Then came the minor considerations of a new housekeeping, and Margery was heartily regretted; though what the good woman would have been able to do where she could neither understand nor make herself understood, would not have been easy to say. Even Mrs.

Costello, who, in her youth, had had considerable practice in speaking French, found herself now and then at a loss; and as for Lucia, having only a sort of school-girl knowledge of the language, she instantly found her comprehension swept away in the flood of words poured upon her by every person she ventured to speak to. "Never mind, I shall soon learn," she said in the most valiant manner; but, alas! for the present, she was almost helpless, and Mrs. Costello had to arrange, bargain, and interpret for both.

They wound up their day's business by a little shopping, which, like everything else, was new to Lucia. The splendid shops, lighted up in the early dusk of the winter afternoon, were as different as anything could be from the stores at Cacouna. A sudden desire to be possessed of a purse full of money, which she might empty in these enchanted palaces, was the immediate and natural effect of the occasion on the mind of such an unsophisticated visitor. She became, indeed, so completely lost in admiration, that her mother made her small purchases without being able to obtain anything but the vaguest and most unsatisfactory opinions on such trifling affairs.

Mr. Wynter derived considerable amusement from watching his young cousin and future ward. He told his wife afterwards that he had begun the day's work entirely from a sense of duty towards poor Mary; but that for once he had found that kind of thing almost as amusing as women seemed to do.

The young girl with her half-Indian nature, and wholly Canadian--ultra Canadian--bringing up, was so bright, simple, and nave, that she was worth watching. Her wonderful beauty, and the unconscious grace of her father's people, kept her from ever appearing countrified or awkward; her simplicity was that of a lovely child, and was in no way discordant with the higher nature she had shown in the bitter troubles and perplexities of the past year. She felt safe now and hopeful, inconceivably, absurdly hopeful--yet there was this difference between the happiness of long ago and the happiness to-day, that then she _could_ not believe in sorrow, and now she only _would_ not.

They went back to their hotel for another night. Next day they moved to the apartment they had taken, and submitted themselves to the ministrations of Claudine, their French version of Margery. Submitted is exactly the right word for Lucia's behaviour, at any rate. Claudine appeared to her to have an even greater than common facility of speech; it only needed a single hesitating phrase to open the floodgates, and let out a torrent. Accordingly, until her stock of available French should increase, Lucia decided to take everything with the utmost possible quietness. She would devote herself to her mother, and to becoming a little acquainted with Paris, and give Claudine the fewest possible occasions for eloquence.

Before the two days which Mr. Wynter spent with them in their new dwelling were over, they had begun to feel tolerably settled. In fact, Lucia's spirits, raised by excitement, were beginning to droop a little, and her thoughts to make more and more frequent excursions in search of the friends from whom she was so widely separated. She thought most, it is true, of Percy, and her fancies about him were rose-coloured; but she thought, also, a little sadly, of the dear old home, and the Bellairs and Bella, and even Magdalen Scott, who had been an old acquaintance, if never a very dear friend. She had many wondering thoughts, too, about Maurice. Was he still in England? or was he in Canada? was he at sea? would he come over to see them? would he even know where to find them if he came? Of these last subjects she spoke freely to her mother, only she kept utter silence as to Percy. So it happened that Mrs. Costello, knowing her own estimate of her daughter's lover, and strangely forgetting not only how different Lucia's had been, but that in a nature essentially faithful, love increases instead of dying, through time and absence, comforted herself, and believed that all was now settled for the best. Neither Percy nor Maurice, it was evident, would ever be Lucia's husband. Nothing could be more satisfactory, therefore, than that she should have become indifferent to the one, and have only a sisterly affection for the other. And yet, with unconscious perversity, she was not satisfied. She allowed to herself that Maurice's conduct had been reasonable enough. He had accepted the common belief that Christian was the murderer of Dr.

Morton; and the conclusion which naturally followed, that Christian's daughter, beautiful and good though she might be, was not a fit mistress for Hunsdon; to have done otherwise, would have been Quixotic. Yet in her heart she was bitterly disappointed. If he had but loved Lucia well enough to dare to take her with all her inherited shame, how richly he would have been rewarded when the cloud cleared away! Where would he find another like her? And now, since Maurice could change, who might ever be trusted?

No doubt these meditations were romantic. If Mrs. Costello had been the mother of half-a-dozen children--a woman living in the midst of a busy, lively household, where motherly cares and castle-buildings had to be shared among three or four daughters--she would not have had time to occupy herself so intensely with the affairs of any one. As it was, however, this one girl was her life of life; she threw into her interests the hopes of youth and the experience of middle age. As Lucia grew up, she had watched with anxiety, with hope, and with fear, for the coming of that inevitable time when, either for good or evil, she must love. It had been her fancy that, if Lucia loved Maurice, all would be well; if she loved any other, all would be ill. But time had passed on, and brought change; not one thing had happened according to her anticipations. And she tried to believe that she was glad that it was so, while a shadow of dissatisfaction lay at the bottom of her heart.

When Mr. Wynter left Paris, he did so with the comfortable conviction that his cousins were happily settled; and with the persuasion that, as they both appeared to have a fair share of common sense, they would soon forget their past troubles, and be just like other people.

"I don't like Mary's state of health at present," he said to his wife; "and, if I am not mistaken, she thinks even worse of it than I do; but still, rest of mind and body may do a great deal; and now she is really a widow, and quite safe from any further annoyances, I dare say she will come round."

"And her daughter?" asked Mrs. Wynter rather anxiously. "Do you think she would get on with the girls?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, my dear. She is not much like them, certainly, or, indeed, like any English girl. She is wonderfully pretty, but quite Indian in looks."

"Poor child! what a pity!"

"I am not sure about that. She seems a good girl, and Mary says is the greatest comfort to her, so I suppose she is English at heart; and as for her black eyes, there is something very attractive about them."

Mrs. Wynter sighed again. Lucia's beauty, of which it cannot be said that Mr. Wynter's account was overdrawn, lost all its advantages in her eyes by being of an Indian type. She could never quite persuade herself that her husband had not been walking about the streets of Paris with a handsome young squaw in skins and porcupine quills.

CHAPTER VI.

Poor Maurice! He came up the river early one glorious morning, and standing on the steamboat's deck watched for the first glimpse of the Cottage. His heart was beating so that he could scarcely see, but he knew just where to look, and what to look for. At this time of year there was no hope of seeing the fair figure watching on the verandah as it had done when he went away, but the curl of smoke from the chimney would satisfy him and prove that his darling was still in her old home.

He watched eagerly, breathlessly. Everything was so bright, that his spirits had risen, and he felt almost certain he was in time. There, the last bend of the river was turned, and now the trees that grew about the Cottage and his father's house were visible--now the Cottage itself.

But suddenly his heart seemed to grow still--there was the house, there was the garden where he and Lucia had worked, there was the slope where they had walked together that last evening--but all was desolate. No smoke rose from the chimney; and on the verandah, and on every ledge of the windows snow lay deep and undisturbed; the path to the river was choked and hidden, and by the little gate the drift had piled itself up in a high smooth mound. Desolate!

When the boat stopped at the wharf, there were happily few people about.

Maurice left his portmanteau, and taking the least public way hurried off homewards. It was too late--that was his only thought; to see his father, to know when they went, and if possible whither--his only desire. He strode along the road, seeing and thinking of nothing but Lucia. There was one chance, they might not yet have left Canada. But then that ship, and the curious sense of Lucia's nearness which he had felt when they passed it; she must have been on board! He felt as if he should go mad when he came to his father's gate and saw all looking just as usual, quite calm and peaceful under the broad wintry sunshine. He had only just sense enough at the very last minute to remember that his father was an invalid to whom the joy of his coming might be a dangerous shock. As he thought of this he turned round the corner of the house, and in a moment walked into the kitchen where Mrs. George, the old housekeeper, was busy washing up the breakfast-things.

"Law, Mr. Maurice!" cried Mrs. George, and dropped her teacup and her cloth together--happily both on the table.

Coming into the familiar room, and seeing the familiar face, brought the young man a little to himself. He held his impatience in check while he received Mrs. George's welcome, answered her questions, and asked some in return. Then he sent her in to tell his father of his arrival, and began to walk up and down the kitchen while she was away.

In a minute or two she came out of the sitting-room, and he went in. Mr.

Leigh had had his own troubled thoughts lately, but he forgot them all when he saw his son. Just at first there was only the sudden agitating joy of the meeting--the happiness of seeing Maurice so well--so thoroughly himself and yet improved--of seeing him at home again; but then came trouble.

"So they are gone?" he said almost interrupting the first greetings, and the old man instantly knew that all his fancies had been a mistake, and that Maurice had come back to find Lucia.

And they were gone; and he himself had been a coward and a traitor, and had distrusted his own son and let them go away distrusting him! He saw it now too late. A painful embarrassment seized him.

"Yes," he said hesitatingly. "They went a week ago."

"By New York?"

"Yes."

"In the 'Atalanta' for Havre?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I did not know. I only guessed. Where are they gone?"