They were silent again for a little while.  Lucia’s thoughts, relieved from the first heavy pressure on them by the very fact of having spoken, began to turn from the criminal to the victim; from their own share in the horror to that of others.  One thing seemed to stand out clear and plain from the confusion which still enveloped all else.  She, the daughter of the murderer, could never again meet the wife of the murdered man as a friend.  If the punishment of the father descended to the children, did not their guilt descend too?  Already she seemed to feel the stain of blood upon her hand, and to shrink from herself, as all innocent persons ought to do, henceforward.  And Bella, her old companion and friend, must shrink from her most of all; the very spirit of the dead would surely rise up to forbid all intercourse between them.

Lucia had not boasted of her self-command without reason.  A mind naturally strong, and supported both by pride and affection, had enabled her to meet with courage the bitterness and misery of the past weeks.  But she was only a girl still, and had not learned to rule her thoughts as well as her looks and words.  So if they grew morbid, and her dreary imagination sometimes tortured her uselessly and cruelly, it was no great wonder.  She could suffer and be silent; but she had not yet learnt so to rule her spirit as to save herself needless suffering.

Thus the very intensity of her sympathy for Bella only reacted in loathing and horror of herself; and she had begun to try to devise means for carrying out that avoidance of all most nearly connected with the dead, which seemed to her an imperative duty, when she was startled by her mother’s voice.

“If it is he,” she said—­and it seemed that they both shrank from any plainer expression of their thoughts than these vague phrases—­“if it is he our hardest task is before us.  How will you bear, Lucia, to meet them all again?”

“Mother, I cannot!  Surely you do not think of it.  How can we”—­she shuddered as she spoke—­“how can we go again among any innocent people?”

“My child, we must.  More than that, we must keep our secret, if we can, still.”

“But Bella?  Mother, how can I look at her—­a widow—­and know who I am, and who has done it?”

“Listen to me, Lucia.  My poor child, your burden has been heavy lately; do not make it heavier than it need be.  The crime and the horror are bad enough, but we have no share in them.  No; think of it reasonably.  The wife and child of a criminal, even where there has been daily association between them, are not condemned, but rather pitied.  No mind, but one cruelly prejudiced, would brand them with his guilt.  Do not punish yourself, then, where others would acquit you.  But, indeed, I need not tell you how our very separation is a safeguard to us—­to you especially.  Think of these things; and do not suffer yourself to imagine that there is a bar between you and Bella just now, when I know you love her more than ever.”