TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET. STRAND.
1873.
[_All rights Reserved._]

PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.




A CANADIAN HEROINE.





CHAPTER I.


Mrs. Costello had felt it a kind of reprieve when she heard from Mr.
Strafford that they might delay their journey safely for a month. The
sober middle age which had come upon her before its time, as her life
rolled on out of the anguish and tumult of the past, made home and
quietness the most desirable things on earth to her, and her health and
spirits, neither yet absolutely broken, but both strained almost to the
extent of their endurance, unfitted her for the changes and excitements
of long travel. So she clung to the idea of delay with an unacknowledged
hope that some cause might deliver them from their present terrors, and
yet suffer them to remain at Cacouna.