three or four days was the utmost he could spare at a time. Mrs.
Costello greatly desired to see her husband again, but to do so without
Mr. Strafford's presence was a trial from which she shrank, and which he
thought there was not sufficient reason for her to undergo. It was
decided therefore that he should make arrangements by which, and by the
kindness of the jailer, she should be kept constantly informed of his
condition of health, both mental and bodily. "If he should be either
worse in body or better in mind," she said, "I shall go to him at once;
and I have a strong presentiment that he will need me before long."

A separate consultation from which Lucia was excluded, ended in a
decision to which she would certainly not have consented, however she
might, later, be obliged to yield to it. This was, that if Mrs. Costello
should feel herself called upon to avow her marriage for her husband's
sake, Lucia should first be sent to England and confided to the care of
her mother's cousin, George Wynter, so that she, at least, might be
spared the hard task of facing her small familiar world under a new and
degraded character. But of this plan Lucia suspected nothing. Her
thoughts travelled as often as ever they had done, to that misty _terra
incognita_ which Canadians still call "Home," for now Maurice was there,
and perhaps (but for that thought she reproved herself) Percy also; but
she had now wholly given up her dreams of visiting it, and most surely
would not have resumed them with the prospect of leaving her mother in
sorrow and alone.




CHAPTER X.