"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..