"To hinder, then; I dare say Lucia finds it equally amusing."

"Where is he this evening? Did he go with Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs?"

"No. And I was afraid I should have to stay at home and do the honours;
but he had heard that I intended being here, and was polite enough to
insist on my coming. He was out when I left."

"At the Cottage, of course. No wonder Lucia could not come."

While her friends thus charitably judged her, Lucia was, in truth,
painfully and anxiously occupied by the illness of her mother. Mr.
Percy, aware of her engagement for the evening, had ridden over early in
the afternoon and spent an hour or two lounging beside her, at the piano
or on the verandah. At last, when it grew nearly time for her to start
for Mrs. Scott's, he rose to go.

"Come into the garden for a minute," he said. "It is growing cool now,
and the air from the river is so pleasant."

She obeyed, and they wandered down the garden together. But the minute
lengthened to twenty before they came back, and parted at the wicket.
Lucia went slowly up the steps, disinclined to go in out of the
sunshine, which suited her mood. Mrs. Costello had left her chair and
her work on the verandah and gone indoors. Lucia picked up a fallen
knitting-needle, and carried it into the parlour; but as she passed the
doorway she saw her mother sitting in her own low chair, her head fallen
forward, and her whole attitude strange and unnatural.

Lucia uttered a cry of terror; she sprang to Mrs. Costello's side, and