CHAPTER IV.
Mrs.Costello and Lucia found their journey from Cacouna to New York a very melancholy one.

They had gone through so much already, that change and travel had no power to stimulate their overstrained nerves to any further excitement; the time of reaction had begun, and a sort of languid indifference, which was in itself a misery, seemed to have taken possession of them.

Even Lucia's spirits, generally strong both for enjoyment or for suffering, were completely subdued; she sat by the window of the car looking out at the wintry landscape all day long, yet saw nothing, or remembered nothing that she had seen.

Once or twice she thought, "Perhaps in a few days more, Maurice will be passing over this very line; he will be disappointed when he reaches home and finds that we are gone;" but all her meditations were dreamy and unreal--her mind acted mechanically.

A kind of moral catalepsy benumbed her.