She looked up pitifully. "Don't be vexed with me, Robert, dear; I have thought it all over; weighed it on every side; nights and nights I have been awake pondering what was right to do. And it always comes to the same thing."
"What?"
"It's the old story," she answered with a feeble smile. "'I canna leave my minnie.' There is nobody in the world to take care of Johanna but me, not even Elizabeth, who is engrossed in little Henry. If I left her, I am sure it would kill her. And she can not come with me. Dear!" (the only fond name she ever called him) "for these three years—you say it need only be three years—you will have to go back to India alone."
Robert Lyon was a very good man; but he was only a man, not an angle; and though he made comparatively little show of it, he was a man very deeply in love. With that jealous tenacity over his treasure, hardly blamable, since the love is worth little which does not wish to have its object "all to itself," he had, I am afraid, contemplated not without pleasure the carrying off of Hilary to his Indian home; and it had cost him something to propose that Johanna should go too. He was very fond of Johanna; still—
If I tell what followed will it forever lower Robert Lyon in the estimation of all readers? He said, coldly, "As you please, Hilary;" rose up, and never spoke another word till they reached home.
It was the first dull tea table they had ever known; the first time Hilary had ever looked at that dear face, and seen an expression there which made her look away again. He did not sulk; he was too gentlemanly for that; he even exerted himself to make the meal pass pleasantly as usual; but he was evidently deeply wounded; nay, more, displeased. The strong, stern man's nature within him had rebelled; the sweetness had gone out of his face, and something had come into it which the very best of men have sometimes: alas for the woman who cannot understand and put up with it!
I am not going to preach the doctrine of tyrants and slaves; but when two walk together they must be agreed, or if by any chance they are not agreed, one must yield. It may not always be the weaker, or in weakness may lie the chiefest strength; but it must be one or other of the two who has to be the first to give way; and, save in very exceptional cases, it is, and it ought to be, the woman. God's law and nature's which is also God's, ordains this; instinct teaches it; Christianity enforces it.
Will it inflict a death blow upon any admiration she may have excited, this brave little Hilary, who fought through the world by herself; who did not shrink from traversing London streets alone at seemly and unseemly hours; from going into sponging houses and debtor's prisons; from earning her own livelihood, even in a shop—if I confess that Robert Lyon, being angry with her, justly or unjustly, and she, looking upon him as her future husband, her "lord and master" if you will, whom she would one day promise, and intended, literally "to obey"—she thought it her duty, not only her pleasure but her duty, to be the first to make reconciliation between them? ay, and at every sacrifice, except that of principle.
And I am afraid, in spite of all that "strong-minded" women may preach to the contrary, that all good women will have to do this to all men who stand in any close relation toward them, whether fathers, husbands, brothers, or lovers, if they wish to preserve peace, and love, and holy domestic influence; and that so it must be to the end of time.
Miss Leaf might have discovered that something was amiss; but she was too wise to take any notice, and being more than usually feeble that day, immediately after tea she went to lie down. When Hilary followed her, arranged her pillows, and covered her up, Johanna drew her child's face close to her and whispered,