"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