“Why, of course you did, my dear,” replied Thisbe contemptuously. “Nice one she’d be to go with you, and strengthen and comfort you! Send her to your pa’s greenhouse to turn herself into a pot, and water the plants with warm water, and crying all over, and perhaps she’d do some good; but to go over to Lindum! The idea! Poor little weak thing!”
“But, Thisbe, can you not see that this is a visit that I ought to pay alone?”
“No, miss.”
“But it is: for my husband’s sake.”
“Every good husband who had left his wife in such trouble as you’re in would be much obliged to an old servant for going with you all that long journey. There, miss, once for all—you may go alone, if you like, but I shall follow you and keep close to you all the time, and sit down at the prison gate.”
“Oh, hush, Thibs!” cried Millicent, with a spasm of pain convulsing her features.
“Yes, miss, I understand. And now I’m going. I shan’t speak a word to you; I shan’t even look at you, but be just as if I was a nothing, and all the same I’m there ready for you to hear, and be a comfort in my poor way, so that you may lean on me as much as you like; and, please God, bring us all well out of our troubles. Amen.”
Poor Thisbe’s words were inconsequent, but they were sincere, and she followed her mistress to the coach, and then through the hilly streets of the old city, and finally, as she had suggested, seated herself upon a stone at the prison gates while her mistress went in.
The sound of lock and bolt chilled Millicent; the aspect of the gloomy, high-walled enclosure, with the loose bricks piled on the top to show where the wall had been tampered with, and to hinder escape, the very aspect, too, of the governor’s house, with its barred windows to keep prisoners out, as the walls were to keep them in—a cage within a cage—made her heart sink, and when after traversing stone passages, and hearing doors locked and unlocked, she found herself in the presence of her husband, her brain reeled, a mist came before her eyes, and for a while her tongue refused to utter the words she longed to speak.
“Humph!” said Hallam roughly. “You don’t seem very glad to see me.”