stay and prop to her hitherto had suddenly been snatched away, and she
had now to realize that this support was her confidence in him. For a
long time she had grown accustomed to rest upon the idea that a safe
and honourable future was secured for her child, and this had made
present trials and difficulties endurable. She had seen Percy's
courtship with bitter disappointment, although she had miscalculated its
issue, and through all her sympathy with Lucia, she had secretly
rejoiced at his dismissal; she had felt no scruples in hearing from
Maurice, at the very moment when his prospects had suddenly changed and
brightened, the assurance of his attachment, and she had received his
note that very day with a joy which almost resembled that which a girl
feels who hears from his own lips that her absent lover is faithful to
her. To this mother, cut off from every tie but that of motherhood, her
child was the one only absorbing interest; she had loved Maurice, but
she knew now that she had loved him chiefly as the representative of
Lucia's future safety and happiness. It had never occurred to her that
her own strange marriage, that the race or the character of her husband,
which had been recognized by both mother and daughter as insuperable
obstacles in Percy's case, would estrange the nobler and truer nature.
The whole miserable story would have to be told, she had thought, when
the time came, but she had neither feared its effect on Maurice nor felt
any compunction at the idea of his carrying into an honourable family a
wife whose parentage was her terror and disgrace.

But now that the disgrace had grown immeasurably darker, now that her
story might have to be told, not privately and with extenuation, but in
coarse hard words, and to the whole of the little world that knew her;
now that every one who would, might be able to point at her as the
daughter of a murderer,--how would it be?