rthright.

CHAPTER XI.

When Mr. Percy left Lucia standing at the gate, and began his solitary
walk back to Cacouna, he was almost as happy as she was. A kind of
intoxication had swept away out of his very recollection the selfishness
and policy of his habitual humour,--all that was youthful, generous, and
impulsive in him had sprung suddenly to the surface, and so for the
moment transformed him, that he was literally a different man to what he
had ever been before. He pictured to himself the lovely bright face of
the young girl as his daily companion--a Utopian vision of a small home
where he was to be content with her society, and she with his, and where
by some magic or other everything was to be arranged for them with an
elegant simplicity which he, for that moment, forgot would be expensive
to maintain, rose before his eyes; and he had almost reached his
cousin's house, before this extraordinary hallucination began to yield a
little, and his dreams to be interspersed with recollections of an empty
purse and an angry father.

Alas! the wife and the home were but visions--the empty purse and the
angry father were realities. That very morning a letter from the Earl
had brought him a severe lecture on the folly of his delay in Canada;
there was a sharp passage in it too about Lady Adeliza, who seemed to be
in danger of deserting her truant admirer for one more assiduous. But
indeed it was useless to think of Lady Adeliza now, for whatever might
happen he was pledged to Lucia, and it would be well if her ladyship did
really relieve him by accepting somebody else. Whether she did or no,
however, he felt that his conduct towards her would furnish his father
with sufficient cause for a quarrel, even without the added enormity of
presenting to him a penniless daughter-in-law, who had not even family
influence for a dower.

Poor Mr. Percy! he went into the house in grievous perplexity. Very
much in love, more so than anybody, even himself, would have supposed
possible, but very much doubting already whether the doings of the last
hour or two had not been of a suicidal character, he tried to solve his
difficulties by laying the whole blame upon fate. But to blame fate is
not enough to repair the mischief she may have done; and though he
succeeded in putting off his anxieties, so as not to let them be evident
during the remainder of the evening, they returned with double force as
soon as he was alone.

Mr. Percy