"Then most likely I asked questions, and found out all I could about the new-comer, which, I suppose, you have been doing about Mr. Percy. Bella Latour ought to be a good authority."
"I have not asked any questions. I thought perhaps you might know something about him, or at least about his family."
"About him I certainly know nothing. It is twenty years since I left England, and he would then be only a child. His father I have seen two or three times. Mr. Percy resembles him extremely."
"Was he a handsome man, then?"
"Very handsome. And Lady Lastingham was said to be a most beautiful woman."
"You never saw her?"
"No, she died young. Lord Lastingham married her, as people said, for love; that is to say, her great beauty tempted him. They were very poor, and he was not of a character to bear poverty. She was good and amiable, but he wearied of her, and scarcely pretended to feel her death as a loss."
"Oh! mamma, how could that be possible? if he married her for love?"
"For what he called love, at least. There are men, my child, and perhaps women also, whose only kind of love is a fancy, like a child's for a toy. They see something which attracts them; they try their utmost to obtain it. If they fail, they soon forget their disappointment; if they succeed, they are delighted for the moment, until, the novelty having worn off, they discover that they have paid too dearly for their gratification, and throw aside their new possession in disgust."
Mrs. Costello spoke earnestly, and with a kind of suppressed passion. It seemed as if her words had an application beyond Lucia's knowledge; yet they awed her strangely. Could they be true? Who then could be trusted? for according to her mother's story, Lord Lastingham had not merely deceived his wife, he had deceived himself also, with this counterfeit love. She fell into a reverie, which lasted till the noise of cups and saucers, as Margery brought in tea, put it to flight.