ford for the house
on the promontory. Mrs. Costello felt her heart beat faster and faster
as they followed the well-remembered paths, which, now that a veil of
snow covered all the improvements made under Mr. Strafford's teaching,
seemed quite unchanged since she traversed them last. She recalled the
sensations of that night, the bitter cold, and clear starlight round
her, and the tumult of fear, anger, and hope within. To-day what a
difference! Then she was flying from her husband's tyranny, now she was
going to meet his corpse, and to receive it with tenderness and honour.
Her heart was too full for her to speak. Her companions guessed it, and
left her in peace.

Mr. Strafford had a thousand things to explain and describe to Lucia.
The island was his kingdom; its prosperity his own work; and it was one
of his greatest pleasures to find a stranger who was interested in all
he could tell him. This young girl, too, whom he had known from her
birth, whom he had seen so many times in his wife's arms, who had been
the baby-playfellow of his daughter, had a claim, stronger than she
herself could understand, on the solitary and childless man. He would
have liked to keep her with him always, and see her devote her life, as
he had devoted his, to the cause of her father's people. Her frank and
yet modest manner, joined to what he knew of her conduct lately, pleased
and satisfied him. He took a certain speculative delight in examining
her character, and deciding that, after all, the union of the Indian and
Anglo-Saxon races would be favourable to both. Talking, therefore, in
the most friendly humour with each other, they pursued their way through
the loose and uneven snow, sometimes stumbling into a deep drift,
sometimes crossing a space swept almost bare by the wind. Mrs. Costello
leaned on her old friend's arm. Scarcely half the distance was passed
when she began to be conscious of a feeling of exhaustion from cold and
fatigue, but her determination to go on sustained her; she kept her veil
closely over her face that the others might not see her paleness, and
exerted all her energies to overcome her fatigue. At length they
approached the shore. The sky had lightened considerably, and they could
see some distance up the river. Both sky and water were of a leaden
dulness; only the effects of the morning storm could be seen in the
great waves, tipped with foam, which still rolled sullenly upon the
beach. But there was no sail in