"I am sorry, dear; you would have enjoyed yourself, and there is no
reason to be anxious about me."

"I am very glad I was not gone. Can you go to sleep?"

"Presently. I think I dropped a letter--have you seen it?"

Lucia drew it from her pocket. "It is here, I picked it up."

Mrs. Costello held out her hand for it. She looked at it for a moment,
as if hesitating--then slipped it under her pillow.

Both remained silent for some time; Mrs. Costello, exhausted and pale as
death, lay trying to gather strength for thought and endurance, longing,
yet dreading, to share with her daughter the miserable burden which was
pressing out her very life. Lucia, half hidden by the curtain, sat
pondering uselessly over the letter she had read; feeling a vague fear
and a livelier curiosity. But a heart so ignorant of sadness in itself,
and so filled at the moment with all that is least in accord with the
prosaic troubles of middle life, could not remain long fixed upon a
doubtful and uncomprehended misfortune. Gradually her fancy reverted to
brighter images; the sunny life of her short experience, the only life
she could believe in with a living faith, had its natural immutability
in her thoughts; and she unconsciously turned from the picture which had
been forced upon her--of her mother shrinking terrified from a calamity
about to involve them both--to the brighter one of her own happiness
which that dear mother could not help but share. So strangely apart were
the two who were nearest to each other.