“And so you are going?” he said tenderly.
She gave him one quick look and then said:
“Yes. It is my father’s wish.”
Bayle gazed down at her sweet face, then wildly about the room, as memories of hundreds of happy lessons and conversations flowed back. Then his lips tightened, his brow smoothed, and he said in a cold, hard way: “The path of duty seems difficult at times, Julie, but we must tramp it without hesitating.”
“And you, too, will help me?” Mrs Hallam said aloud. “Any way, in anything,” said Sir Gordon sadly. “I would sail you both over in my yacht, but it would be madness to expose you to the risk. Yes; I’ll do the best I can to get you a passage in a good ship. Yes—yes—yes! I’ll do my best.”
He looked at Bayle in a troubled way, but found no sympathy in the cold, stern face that seemed to be unchanged when they left together an hour later, each pledged to do his best to expatriate two tender women, and so send them to what was then a wilderness of misery—and worse.
“It must be, I suppose, Bayle, my dear boy?” said Sir Gordon.
“Yes; it must be,” was the reply.
“I’m glad she says she will go down to Castor first, and stay a few days with the old people.”
“Did she say that?”