Her face unconsciously brightened while she thought over all these things, and suffered herself again to dwell on her old favourite idea without being in the least doubtful as to Lucia's final consent. Yet while she thus laid the foundation for new castles in the air, Lucia herself was busy with thoughts and recollections not too favourable to her mother's plans.
Percy, not Maurice, filled _her_ mind. She went back, in her fancies, to the night when he had told her she must go with him to England, and she had been so happy and so ignorant of all that was to separate them. Then she thought of the next day, and how she had sent him away, and told him that it would disgrace him to marry her. Somehow the disgrace which had weighed so heavily on her then seemed marvellously light now, since she had known one so much deeper; and in the blessed sense of freedom which came to her through Clarkson's confession, she was ready to think that all else was of small consequence. Did not girls marry every day whose fathers were all that her father had been? Ah, not _all_; there was always that Indian blood, which, though it might be the blood of kings and heroes, put its possessor on a level with the lowest of Europeans, or rather put him apart as something little higher than a brute. She knew this; but to-night she would not think of it. She would only see what she liked; and for the first time began to weave impossible fabrics of hope and happiness. Where was he, her one lover, for she thought of no other? She had no fear of a rival with him, not even of that Lady Adeliza, of whom she had heard, and whom she had once feared. Now she knew that he really had loved _her_, and feared nothing; for even supposing that he would in time forget her, love had not had time to change yet. And need it change at all? She and her mother were going by-and-by to Europe, and there they might meet. Who could tell?
But all these things which have taken so long to say took but a few minutes to think; and of the three who sat together, neither would have guessed how long a train of ideas passed through the brains of the others in the interval of their talk. Mrs. Costello was the first to rouse herself.