"I thought you might have had a brighter fate than that, darling. Perhaps I thought more of seeing you a happy woman than a good one; but if you are never to have the home I wished for you, you will find, at any rate, that a single woman's life may be full of usefulness and honour."
Ah! that brighter fate! Mrs. Costello thought of Maurice, and sighed for the loss to two lives. Lucia's heart still turned loyally to the one lover who had claimed it, but both knew that the "brighter fate" was no longer a possibility now.
CHAPTER XII.
Lucia walked with her mother to the gates of the jail, but she could not obtain permission to go any further. Although the proposal to send her to England was, in fact, abandoned, there seemed no reason why she should be brought sooner than was needful into contact with what could not but be painful; and she was obliged to yield in this matter to her mother's judgment.
They parted, therefore, at the gates; and Mrs. Costello was admitted without delay to the cell where Christian was confined. A cell, properly speaking, it was not; for they had removed him since her former visit, and he now occupied a good-sized room on the upper floor, which was nearly as bare and as glaringly white as the other, but more airy. His low wooden bedstead was drawn near to the window, which, cold as it was, stood open, while a small box-stove, heated almost red hot, kept the temperature of the room tolerably high. On the bed, partly dressed, and wrapped in a blanket, lay the prisoner. He neither moved nor paid any attention when his visitor came in, and she had time to see all the change confinement and illness had made in him. And the change was, indeed, startling. All the flush of intemperance had left his face, and at this moment his fever had subsided also, and left him only the natural dark but clear tint of his Indian blood; his hair had been smoothly combed, and looked less grey than when it hung tangled and knotted; his extreme weakness gave him an aspect of repose, which brought back the ghost of his old self—something of the look of that Christian who had been, to a girl's fancy, so fit a hero of romance.
It was but a likeness, truly, shadowy and dim, but it seemed to bridge over the interval—the long, long weary years since the hero changed into the tyrant, and to make far easier that task of comforting and helping which duty, and not love, had imposed.
She came to his side, and still he did not notice her. His eyes were fixed on the pale, grey, snowy sky, and he seemed deaf to the slight sounds of her movements. She sat down and watched him silently. From the first moment she knew that all, and more than all, Elton had said was true. She saw death unmistakable, inevitable, and close at hand, and reproached herself for not having come sooner. But in that strange calm and stillness, even self-reproach seemed to be curbed and repressed—even a quickened beating of the heart would have been out of place. So they remained until fully half an hour had passed, when the door of the room again opened; this time to admit the doctor.
He was an elderly man, kind, busy, and quick in his words and motions. He came in briskly, and looked rather surprised at seeing Mrs. Costello. She only bowed, however, and drew back as he came towards the bedside. He was followed into the room by the jailer's wife, who had compassionately tended the prisoner ever since his illness increased.
Christian seemed to wake from his stupor, or dream, at the sound of the doctor's voice. He answered the questions put to him mechanically but clearly, and with his old purity of accent and expression. The dialogue, however, even with Mrs. Elton's comments, was but a short one, and as soon as it was ended, Mrs. Costello came forward and stopped the doctor on his way from the room.