she said, "to get away from Hunsdon a li

[Krammes]

R who had claimed it, but both knew that the "brighter fate" was no
longer a possibility now. CHAPTER XII. Lucia walked with her mother to
the gates of the jail, but she could not obtain permission to go any
further. Although the proposal to send her to England was, in fact,
abandoned, there seemed no reason why she should be brought sooner than
was needful into contact with what could not but be painful; and she was
obliged to yield in this matter to her mother's judgment. They parted,
therefore, at the gates; and Mrs. Costello was admitted without delay to
the cell where Christian was confined. A cell, properly speaking, it was
not; for they had removed him since her former visit, and he now
occupied a good-sized room on the upper floor, which was nearly as bare
and as glaringly white as the other, but more airy. His low wooden
bedstead was drawn near to the window, which, cold as it was, stood
open, while a small box-stove, heated almost red hot, kept the
temperature of the room tolerably high. On the bed, partly dressed, and
wrapped in a blanket, lay the prisoner. He neither moved nor paid any
attention when his visitor came in, and she had time to see all the
change confinement and illness had made in him. And the change was,
indeed, startling. All the flush of intemperance had left his face, and
at this moment his fever had subsided also, and left him only the
natural dark but clear tint of his Indian blood; his hair had been
smoothly combed, and looked less grey than when it hung tangled and
knotted; his extreme weakness gave him an aspect of repose, which
brought back the ghost of his old self--something of the look of that
Christian who had been, to a girl's fancy, so fit a hero of romance. It
was but a likeness, truly, shadowy and dim, but it seemed to bridge over
the interval--the long, long weary years since the hero changed into the
tyrant, and to make far easier that task of comforting and helping which
duty, and not love, had imposed. She came to his side, and still he did
not notice her. His eyes were fixed on the pale, grey, snowy sky, and he
seemed deaf to the slight sounds of her movements. She sat down and
watched him silently. From the first moment she knew that all, and more
than all, Elton had said was true. She saw death unmistakable,
inevitable, and close at hand, and reproached herself for not having
come sooner. But in that 
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