Mrs. Costello was silent for a moment.  She knew that Lucia had had another burden, especially her own, to bear, and it seemed to her that Mrs. Bellairs must know or guess something of it too.  If she did, it would be as well for her to know the exact truth.  She made up her mind at once.

“I found that it was necessary to tell her,” she said, “just before Mr. Percy went away.”

Mrs. Bellairs looked at her inquiringly.

“I was afraid,” she answered, “that he was likely to cause you some uneasiness.”

“He did more than that,” Mrs. Costello said.  “He gave Lucia her first hard thoughts of her mother.  But after all I may be doing him injustice.  Did you know that he really wanted to carry her away with him?”

“He did!  And she refused him?”

“She refused him, when she knew her own position, and the impossibility of her marrying him.”

“Dear Mrs. Costello, what complications!  I begin to understand now all that has puzzled me.”

“You had some suspicion of the truth?”

“Of part of it.  I don’t like Edward Percy, and I was afraid he was gaining an influence with Lucia which would make her unhappy.  I even thought at one time that he was really in earnest, but from some news we received a few days ago I set that down as a mistake.”

“News of him?  What was it?”

“That he is engaged to a lady whom his father wished him to marry; and that they are to be married almost immediately.”

“I am very glad,” Mrs. Costello said, “and there is nothing to be surprised about.  He was tempted for the moment by a pretty face, but he was not a man to waste time in thinking about a girl who had refused him.”

She said this; but she thought in her heart, ’He is not like Maurice.  If Lucia had refused him so, he would have known that she loved him still; and while she did so, he would have had no thoughts for any other.’  She asked, however,

“Did you hear from him that this was true?”

“No.  But it was from an old college friend of my husband’s who is now in England.”

“I do not see any use in telling Lucia.  She dismissed him herself, and is, I hope, fast forgetting him in all these other affairs that have come upon us.”

“Surely she cannot have cared enough for him to feel the separation as she would have done if he had really been worth loving,” Mrs. Bellairs added; and then they left the subject, quite forgetting that reason and love seldom go hand-in-hand, and that Lucia was still devoutly believing in two falsities:  first, that Percy was capable of a steady and faithful affection, and secondly, that he must still have something of that affection for her.  Even at this very moment she was comforting her heart with this belief; and the discovery that her mother’s dearest friends showed no inclination to desert them in their new character, filled her with a kind of blind sweet confidence in that one whom, as she now thought, she had treated so ungenerously, and who did not yet know their secret.