trusted me before?"

"It would have been useless; no one can help me."

Her voice seemed changed and broken, and she had grown ashy pale in
alluding to the dreadful subject. Maurice could not bear to leave her in
this uncertainty.

"Dear Mrs. Costello," he said, "if you had a son you would let him share
your anxieties. I have so long been used to think of you almost as a
mother, that I feel as if I had a kind of right to your confidence; and
I cannot imagine any trouble in which you would be better without
friends than with them."

"Sometimes," she answered, "it is part of our penalty to suffer alone.
Hitherto I have done so. No, Maurice, though you could scarcely be
dearer to me if you were my son, I cannot tell even you, at present,
what I fear."

"At present? But you will, later?"

"Later, perhaps. Certainly, if ever we meet again."

"Which we shall do. You do not mean that you would not let me know where
you go?"

"Perhaps I ought to mean it."

"It would be useless. Whenever you go I shall find you. You know--I am
almost sure you know--that whether right or wrong, it is leaving you