cannot follow her, and a long parting is more than I have courage to
think of. So I come back to the same point from which I started. I am
almost bewildered by this new wretchedness that has fallen upon us; and
I wait for your sympathy and counsel with most impatient eagerness."

She had not, however, to wait long. The country post, always irregular,
for once favoured her anxiety, and only two days afterwards came a
hurried note, bringing the best possible answer. Mr. Strafford wrote,

"The fact of one of my people being in such trouble would bring me to
Cacouna if I had no other reason for coming. I shall be with you,
therefore, the day after you receive this. No one, I should think,
need, for the present at least, know of any connection whatever between
your family affairs and my visit. My errand is to try what can be done
for the unhappy prisoner, and, as an old friend, I shall ask your
hospitality during my stay. Then I will give you what advice and help I
can; of my truest and warmest sympathy I know I need give you no
assurance."

To both mother and daughter this note brought comfort, though Lucia had
no knowledge whatever of the many thoughts regarding her father which
had begun to occupy her mother's mind. To her, strange and unnatural as
it may seem, he was simply an object of fear and abhorrence. She hated
him as the cause of her mother's sufferings, of their false and insecure
position, and of the self-loathing which possessed her when she thought
of their relationship. The idea of any wifely duty owing to him could
never have struck her, for what visions of married life she had,
belonged to a world totally unlike that of her parents' experience, and
she regarded what she knew of that as something beyond all reach of
ordinary rules or feelings.