"Dear Mrs. Costello, what complications! I begin to understand now all that has puzzled me."
"You had some suspicion of the truth?"
"Of part of it. I don't like Edward Percy, and I was afraid he was gaining an influence with Lucia which would make her unhappy. I even thought at one time that he was really in earnest, but from some news we received a few days ago I set that down as a mistake."
"News of him? What was it?"
"That he is engaged to a lady whom his father wished him to marry; and that they are to be married almost immediately."
"I am very glad," Mrs. Costello said, "and there is nothing to be surprised about. He was tempted for the moment by a pretty face, but he was not a man to waste time in thinking about a girl who had refused him."
She said this; but she thought in her heart, 'He is not like Maurice. If Lucia had refused him so, he would have known that she loved him still; and while she did so, he would have had no thoughts for any other.' She asked, however,
"Did you hear from him that this was true?"
"No. But it was from an old college friend of my husband's who is now in England."
"I do not see any use in telling Lucia. She dismissed him herself, and is, I hope, fast forgetting him in all these other affairs that have come upon us."