“Her father?” Mrs. Bellairs repeated.  “He was a Spaniard, was not he?”

“I have never said so.  People imagined it, and I was glad that they should, but it is not true.”

“Who then?  She is dark like a Spaniard or Italian.”

“Are there no dark races but those of Europe?”

“What do you mean?  Tell me, for Heaven’s sake!”

“You have always thought me a widow, yet my husband is still alive.  I left him long ago when he did not need me; now he is ill and in prison, and I am going back to him.  He is Christian, whom you have all thought a murderer.”

“Christian! the Indian?  Impossible!  Lucia, can this be true?”

“It is true.”

“And you knew it all this time?”

“Yes.  All the time.”

“My poor child, what misery!  But I cannot understand.  How can this be?”

“Do you not shrink from us!  We tell you the truth.  We are not what you have always known us; we are only the wife and daughter of an Indian.”

“Don’t—­don’t speak so.  What difference can it make to me?  Only, how could you bear all you must have borne?  It is wonderful.  I can scarcely believe it yet.”

“Do not suppose that Lucia has been deceiving you all these years; she only knew the truth a few months ago.”

“But there is no deceit.  You had a right to keep such a secret if you chose.”  Mrs. Bellairs rose.  She stepped to Lucia’s side and kissed her pale cheeks.  “You must have had Indian courage,” she said, “to be so brave and steady at your age.”

Lucia returned the kiss with an earnestness that expressed a whole world of grateful affection.  Then she slipped out of the room, and left the two friends together.

They both sat down again; this time side by side, and Mrs. Costello told in few words as much of her story as was needful.  She dwelt, however, so lightly on the sufferings of her life at Moose Island that any one, who had known or loved her less than Mrs. Bellairs did, might have thought she had fled with too little reason from the ties she was now so anxious to resume.  She spoke very shortly, too, of the fears she had had during the past summer of some discovery, and mentioned having told Lucia her true history, without any allusion to the particular time when it was told.  Mrs. Bellairs recollected the meeting with the squaw at the farm, and inquired whether Lucia then knew of her Indian descent.

“No,” Mrs. Costello said, “that was one of the things which alarmed me.  I did not tell her till some time after that; not, indeed, until after Bella’s marriage.”

“Poor child! and then for this terrible trouble to come!  No wonder you are both changed.”

“Do you think her changed?” Mrs. Costello asked in alarm.  “She has been so brave.”

“She has grown to look much older and as if she thought too much; that is all.  And that is no wonder.”