Yet much as she would have wondered had she known it, her mother's
thoughts were coming to be hour by hour more occupied with that long
unseen and dreaded husband, who had indeed been her tyrant, but who was
still bound to her by ties of her own weaving, and who was the father of
her child. A strange mixture of feelings had taken the place of her old
fear and disgust; there was still horror, especially of the new guilt
which separated him more than ever from her purer world, but there was a
deep and yearning pity also. She felt sure, before Mr. Strafford
arrived, that he would tell her she was right; that Christian--even by
the very act which had put him out of the ranks of ordinary men, out of
the place, low and degraded as it was, which he had filled among his own
people--had recovered a claim upon her, and that she must not fail to
give him in his need what succour might be possible. She was right, and
Lucia heard with dismay that their secret was about to be betrayed to
the very person from whom most of all it had hitherto been kept.

Nothing, however, was to be done rashly. Mr. Strafford arrived late in
the evening, and next day he proposed to go to the jail to see
Christian, which he knew there would be no difficulty in doing, and to
bring back to Mrs. Costello such an account as would enable her to judge
how far her interference might or might not be useful. There was still a
chance that it might be useless, and to that hope Lucia clung with a
pertinacity which added to her mother's anxieties.

In the three days which had now passed since the murder, the minds even
of those most nearly concerned had had time to rally a little from the
first shock, and to begin to be conscious of the world around them going
on just as usual in spite of all. Doctor Morton had been to a singular
degree without relatives. An old and infirm uncle, living a long