"About myself--and him," she murmured.
Mrs.Costello raised her daughter's face to the light, and looked at it closely with an almost bitter scrutiny.
"Child," she said, "I thought you would have been safe from this.

I did him injustice, it seems." A new instinct in Lucia's mind roused her against her mother.

She let her clinging arms fall, and raised her head.
"I do not understand you, mother," she answered, and half rose from where she had been kneeling.
"Stay, Lucia," and her mother's hand detained her.

"I have tried to save you from suffering.

I see now that I have been wrong.