I felt a sense of relief that Roderick had not glanced in my direction. Had he done so, he would inevitably have recognized me, and I should have been confronted at our next meeting with all manner of awkward inquiries. For I could not tell him that his daughter was in my keeping and then refuse to let him see or communicate with her.
The hotel seemed a most magnificent place to Winifred; for though we had been in very comfortable quarters in Dublin, the luxury of a New York hotel seems quite a different affair. The service in the dining-room, the table appointments, the variety of the bill of fare, the orchestra which played sweet strains during all the meal, were dreamlike, almost, to this child of the hills. The elevator seemed to her as something very amusing. She would like to have gone up and down in it several times. She had a charming little room adjoining mine, all done in gray and pink, and an outlook upon the gay street.
She could scarcely tear herself away from the window in the few days that elapsed before I had decided upon a school for her and made some simple preparations. Indeed, I found it rather difficult to decide upon a school for the child, not because there were no good ones, but for the opposite reason that there were so many. But to one thing I made up my mind: she must be out of town. The presence of her father in New York made that a necessity. Yet, on the other hand, I could not send her too far away, as I wanted to see her often, mark her progress and the effect of austere school-life on one who had been accustomed to a free, wild existence on the beautiful Wicklow hills. It was this circumstance which finally determined my choice. I must be in easy distance of the child, so great was my responsibility.
I took her to her new home one evening just as the shadows were deepening and New York lay like a great map traced out in lights. They gleamed and glowed through the gathering darkness, and through the smoke clouds which arose from the countless factories. I felt a curious sense of desolation, and I was certain that Winifred would suffer from this when she found herself enclosed in an unfamiliar building, to become a mere atom, as it were, in a multitude.
The child was grave and quiet, but did not seem to shrink at all from school-life. In fact, she had rather entered into the prospect of going there with the enthusiasm of her age, and had begun to plan out the details of her new existence. She told me after that she had experienced an awful sense of loneliness when going to bed in a strange dormitory, with its rows of curtained beds, amongst so many whom she had never seen before. During the night prayers and the final hymn she had cried all the time.
These sensations are common enough to all who go into new scenes for the first time; but for some weeks after Winifred's arrival at the convent she reminded me of nothing so much as a bird in a cage. I am sure the ordinary little restraints of school-life must have been intolerable to one brought up, as she had been, unrestrained upon the hills. In the austere convent parlor, with her black dress, and her curls fastened back from her face with a ribbon, she was like a spirit of her former self. She told me, in her quaint speech, that she only lived from one visit of mine to another. Usually she was pale, sad and listless. The spirit of mischief seemed to have gone out of her, and the Religious who presided in the parlor told me that she was docile to her teachers and very diligent in her studies.
"If I study very hard perhaps I will get home sooner," Winifred explained to me as we sat hand in hand in the corner of the parlor. "My heart aches to see Ireland again, and the Dargle and the hills and Granny and Niall and Father Owen, and every one."
"It will not be very long till you see them all again," I observed soothingly. "Time passes very quickly."
She heaved a deep sigh, as if to signify that time did not pass so very quickly for her.
When I rose to go that day I told her that I was going to get permission, if possible, for her to come down and spend a day with me.