and ugly reality. Like his father, Maurice found no small difficulty in
understanding and believing the story told to him. That Mrs. Costello,
calm, gentle, and just touched with a quiet stateliness, as he had
always known her, could ever have been an impulsive, romantic girl, so
swayed by passion or by flattery as to have left her father's house and
all the protecting restraints of her English life to follow the fortunes
of an Indian, was an idea so startling that he could not at once accept
it for truth. In Lucia the incongruity struck him less. Her beauty, dark
and magnificent, her fearless nature, her slender erect shape, her free
and graceful movements--all the charms which he had by heart, suited an
Indian origin. He could readily imagine her the daughter of a chief and
a hero. But this was not what he was required to believe. He had read
lately the description of a brutal, half-imbecile savage, who had
committed a peculiarly frightful and revolting murder, and he was told
to recognize in this wretch the father of his darling. But it was just
this which saved him. He would believe that Christian was Mrs.
Costello's husband and Lucia's father, because Mrs. Costello told him so
herself and of her own knowledge--but as for a murder, innocent men were
often accused of that; and when a man is once accused by the popular
voice of a horrible crime, everybody knows how freely appropriate
qualities can be bestowed on him. So the conviction which remained at
the bottom of Maurice's mind, though he never drew it up and looked
steadily at it, was just the truth--that Christian, by some train of
circumstances or other, had been made to bear the weight of another
person's guilt. As to the other question of his giving up Lucia, Maurice
never troubled himself to think about it. He was, it must be confessed,
of a singularly obstinate disposition, and in spite of his legal
training not particularly inclined to listen to reason. Knowing
therefore perfectly well, that he had made up his mind to marry Lucia,
provided she did not deliberately prefer somebody else, he felt it