"I will remember it, father," answered I, religiously; and something in my heart forbade me to add, as I wanted to, "But I never shall think differently."
How could I tell him that I loved a man who had never spoken to me of love, who I had every reason to suppose loved another woman, and that woman my own sister? No; I had not the courage so to humble myself; I had not the courage so to grieve him. Mother's voice sounded without. "Bring in prayers, Joyce," called she, using the well-known topsy-turvy phrase that I had known ever since I was a child. "It's late enough."
But as I knelt there that night, mingling my voice with the voices of all those I loved, in the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer, I thought God had been very hard to me, and the fear that he might even take away my father from me brought such a storm of terrified and rebellious agony that I felt I could not honestly say the words that had passed so easily over my head these fifteen years, "Thy will be done."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A week went by—silent, uneventful—the world of action and emotion as leaden as the sky was leaden above our heads.
Father led his usual life, and seemed in no way worse than he had been for some time; so that the sick fear within me was lulled for a while to rest, and, realizing the emptiness of the present, I forgot the possibility of even greater evil in the future.
The summer was gone—the summer that even the oldest people in the village declared to have been more wonderfully bright and long than any they had ever seen; September closed with a whirl of storms and a drenching of bitter rain.
In the deserted hop-gardens—strewn with the unpicked tendrils of the ruined crops, or studded with the conical tents of the stacked ash-poles—only dead ashes recorded the merry flames that had leaped up towards the merry faces; the summer was gone, and everywhere trees and hedges were turning to ruddy tones upon the brooding sky.
Ah me! Harvesting had slipped into winter before, and green leaves had turned to gold, and summer birds had flown to southern homes, but never had storms followed so quickly upon sunshine, nor flowers withered so fast upon their stems, nor hopes fallen so quickly to the ground!