When you are an old woman you may be glad to remember that they were ever written." Lucia could not answer.

She carried the packet away to her own chair, and sitting down, opened it and began to read.

It was only Maurice's notes, written to Mrs.Costello from England, and they were many of them very hasty, impetuous, and not particularly well-expressed missives.

But if they had been eloquence itself, they could not have stirred the reader's heart as they did.

It was the simple bare fact of a great love--so much greater than she could ever have deserved, and yet passed by, disregarded, unperceived in her arrogant ignorance; this was what she seemed to see in them, and it wrung her heart with vain repentance and regret.