Mrs.Bellairs and Maurice Leigh, the two people, who, except her daughter, loved her best, grieved over her unrested, pallid face, and noticed that her soft brown hair had more and more visible streaks of grey.

They thought her ill, and each had said so, but she answered so positively that nothing was the matter, that they were unable to do more than seem to accept her assurances.

But to Lucia, when, with a tenderness which seemed to have grown both deeper and more fitful, she would implore to be told the cause of such evident suffering, Mrs.Costello gave a different answer.
"I have told our friends the truth," she said; "I am not ill in body, but a little anxious and disturbed in mind.

Have patience for a while, my darling, the time for you to share all my thoughts is, I fear, not far distant." So Lucia waited, too full of life and happiness herself to be much troubled even by the shadow resting on her mother, and growing daily more absorbed in a strange new delight of her own--seeing all things through a new medium, and filling her heart too full of the joy of the present, to leave room in it for one grave fear of the future.
Wonderful alchemy of the imagination, which can draw from a nature ignoble, and altogether earthly, nourishment for dreams so sweet and so sunny! Lucia's fancy had made for her a picture, such as most girls make for themselves once in their lives, and the portrait was as unfaithful as the original himself could have desired.

Mr.Percy had become almost a daily visitor at the Cottage.