"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