o some far-away
fairy country where there were no mistakes and no misunderstandings.

Between these two--between morning and evening--time was almost a blank.
Lucia had completely given up her habits of study. She did not even read
novels, except aloud; and when she was not in some way occupied in
caring for her mother, she sat hour after hour by the window, with a
piece of crochet, which seemed a second Penelope's web, for it never was
visibly larger one day than it had been the day before. Mrs. Costello
gradually grew anxious as she perceived how dull and inanimate her
daughter remained. She would almost have been glad of an excuse for
giving her a gentle scolding, but Lucia's entire submission and
sweetness of temper made it impossible. There seemed nothing to be done,
but to try to force her into cheerful occupation, and to hope that time
and her own good sense would do the rest. Hitherto they had had no
piano; they got one, and for a day or two Lucia made a languid pretence
of practising. But one day she was turning over her music, among which
were a number of quaint old English songs and madrigals, which she and
Maurice had jointly owned long ago at Cacouna, when she came upon one
the words of which she had been used to laugh at, much to the annoyance
of her fellow-singers. She had a half remembrance of them, and turned
the pages to look if they were really so absurd. The music she knew
well, and how the voices blended in the quaint pathetic harmony.

"Out alas! my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue,
Nor grant me any grace.
I sit and sigh, I weep, I faint, I die,
While she alone refuseth sympathy."

She shut the music up, and would have said, if anybody had asked her,
that she had no patience with such foolish laments, even in poetry; but,
nevertheless, the verse stayed in her memory, haunted her fancy
perpetually, and seemed like a living voice in her ears--

"Out alas! my faith is ever true."

She cared no more for singing, for every song she liked was associated
with Maurice, and each one seemed now to have the same burden; and when
she played, it was no longer gay airs, or even the wonderful 'Morceaux
de Salon,' of incredible noise and difficulty, which had been required
of her as musical exhibitions, but always some melancholy andante or
reverie which seemed to come to her fingers without choice or intention.

One day when she had gone for her solitary walk, and Mrs. Cos