"Dear Mr. Leigh! you cannot. You have not been out of the house for weeks."
"All laziness. Though indeed I could not pretend to walk so far. But we can have Lane's covered sleigh, and go without any trouble."
Mrs. Costello still protested; but in her heart she was perfectly well aware that Mr. Leigh's presence would be a support to her in the first painful moments when she must acknowledge herself the wife of a supposed murderer—and more than that, of an Indian, who had become in the imagination of Cacouna, the type and ideal of a savage criminal. So, finally, it was arranged that she should be accompanied to the prison on the following day by her two faithful friends (supposing Mr. Strafford to have then arrived), and that in the meantime she should merely pay her husband a visit without betraying any deeper interest in him than she had shown already.
Mr. Leigh asked whether he should tell Maurice what he had himself just heard, and in reply Mrs. Costello gave him the note she had written, and asked him to enclose it for her.
"I thought it was better and kinder to write to him myself," she said. "It will be a shock to Maurice to know the real position of his old playfellow."
Mr. Leigh looked at her doubtfully.
"It will be a surprise, no doubt," he said, "as it was to me, and he will be heartily sorry not to be here now to show you both how little change such a discovery makes. But do you know, Mrs. Costello, it has struck me lately that there was something wrong either with you and Maurice, or with Lucia and Maurice?"
"There is nothing wrong with either, I assure you. You know yourself," she answered with a smile, "that Maurice never forgets to send us a note by every mail."
"That is true; but it does not altogether convince me; Maurice is worried and unhappy about something, and yet I cannot make out that there is anything in England to trouble him."
"On the contrary," Mrs. Costello said, as she rose, "except for Mr. Beresford's illness I think he has everything he can reasonably wish for—and more."