Whatever thoughts she may have had that militated against her hopes she crushed down, forcing herself to see nothing but the result of a terrible persecution, and ready to be angered with herself for any doubts as to her duty.
In this spirit she followed the man who had led them in back to the gates, where Bayle was waiting; and as he gazed anxiously in the faces of the two women it was to see Julie’s scared, white, and ready to look appealingly in his, while Mrs Hallam’s was radiant and proud with the light of her true woman’s love and devotion to him she told herself it was her duty to obey.
That night mother and daughter, clasped in each other’s arms, knelt and prayed, the one for strength to carry out her duty, and restore Robert Hallam to his place in the world of men; the other for power to love the father whom she had crossed the great ocean to gain—the man who had seemed to be so little like the father of her dreams.
Volume Four—Chapter One.
In the New Land—The Situation.
“Look here, Bayle, this is about the maddest thing I ever knew. Will you have the goodness to tell me why we are stopping here?”
Bayle looked up from the book he was reading in the pleasant room that formed their home, one which Tom Porter had found no difficulty in fitting up in good cabin style.
A year had glided by since they landed, a year that Sir Gordon had passed in the most unsatisfactory way.