"You will be happy again!" Did any one of us in the first dull pain of a new, inexplicable suffering, ever believe such words as those?
Lucia read her mother's face, tone, gestures too well to doubt that she regarded this long-kept secret as something which must separate her from Percy--must separate her, she therefore fancied, from all that was best and sweetest in life.

It was hard that she should have been suffered to taste happiness, if it was instantly to be snatched from her.

She felt this half resentfully, shrinking into herself, and cowering before the unknown trial, which, when fully understood, her natural courage would enable to meet with energy.

She sat with her head resting on her hands, while Mrs.Costello left the room, and came back carrying a small, old-fashioned desk, which she placed upon the table.

This desk, which she knew had been her mother's when a girl, and which contained many little treasures, attracted Lucia's attention.