However, I have great hopes that when you find yourself away from the places where you have suffered so much, and near your own people, you will grow quite strong again." There were messages from his wife and daughters, in conclusion, which seemed to promise that they also would be ready to welcome their unknown relatives.
"Blood is thicker than water." Mrs.Costello began to feel that the one secure asylum for Lucia, in her probable orphanhood, would be in the old house by the Dee.
The next time she saw Mr.Leigh, she told him her plans quite frankly.
She did so with some suspicion of his real feelings, only that in spite of their long acquaintance she did him the injustice to fancy that he would, for reasons of his own, be glad that Lucia should be out of Maurice's way if he returned to Canada.

She supposed that he had, on reflection, begun to shrink from the idea of a half-Indian daughter-in-law, and while she confessed to herself that the feeling was, according to ordinary custom, reasonable enough, she was at heart extremely angry that it should be entertained.
"My beautiful Lucia!" she said to herself indignantly; "as if she were not ten times more lovely, and a thousand times more worth loving, than any of those well-born, daintily brought up, pretty dolls, that Lady Dighton is likely to find for him! I did think better of Maurice.

But, of course, it is all right enough.

I had no right to expect him to be more than mortal." And Lucia went on in the most perfect unconsciousness of all the troubled thoughts circling round her.

She spoke honestly of her regret at leaving Canada when, perhaps, Maurice might so soon be there, though she kept to herself the hopes which made her going so much less sad than it would have been otherwise.