be fought there in
solitude, and that hers was not the only vigil kept that night. So the
two watched apart; and the dawn, which was not far distant when they
bade each other good-night, came in and found them both looking out
with sleepless eyes at the grey sky and the familiar landscape, from
which they were each planning to escape for ever.

But as the sky reddened, Lucia remembered that her sleepless night would
leave traces which she wished to avoid, in her pale cheeks and heavy
eyes. She lay down therefore, and at last fell asleep. Her over-excited
brain, however, could not rest; the most troubled and fantastic dreams
came to her,--her mother, Mary Wanita, Percy, Maurice, and many other
persons seemed to surround her--but in every change of scene there
appeared the shadowy figure of her father, constantly working or
threatening harm. Sometimes she saw him as he looked in his portrait,
and shrank from him as a kind of evil genius, beautiful and yet
terrible--sometimes like the Indian who had met her by the river, a
hideous, scarcely human object. Then, last of all, she saw him
distinctly, as the scene her mother had described, the last time when
she had really seen him, came before her, not by the power of
imagination but of memory. For, waking up, she knew that, impressed upon
her childish recollection by terror, that scene had never been entirely
forgotten. Having no clue to its reality, she had always supposed it to
be a dream; but now as it came back with some degree of vividness, she
saw plainly the face which was neither that of the likeness nor that of
her assailant, but might well be a link between the two--the same face
in transition.

The idea was too horrible. She rose, and tried by hurried dressing to
drive it from her mind; but it returned persistently. She went, at last,
to her looking-glass and looked into it with a terror of herself. Never
was ugliness so hateful as the beauty she saw there. For there could be
no doubt about this, at least; except for the softening into womanly
traits, and for a slightly fairer complexion, the picture her glass
showed her was a faithful copy of that other, which she had seen for the
first time last night. What beauty her mother had ever possessed had
been thoroughly English in its character--hers was wholly Indian. She
turned away with a feeling of loathing for herself, and a fearful glance
into her heart as if to seek there also for some proof of this hateful
bi