Christie Bayle would help her and protect Julia, whom he loved as if she were his child. He would—yes, she reiterated the thought with a strange feeling of joy—he would help her, as he had helped her before, in this time of anguish, and protect Julia from that man.
For now came, in all its solid horror, the reality of that which had only been cast, so far, as a shadow across her path.
This man, Crellock, who had seemed like Hallam’s evil genius from the first, but whom she saw now as her husband’s willing tool, had conceived a passion for her darling child. More—he was her husband’s chosen companion in pleasure and in guilt, and Hallam would—if he had not done so already—accept him.
“And I sit here bemoaning my suffering,” she cried passionately, “when such a blow is impending for my darling. Shame! shame! Am I ever to be so weak a woman, so mere a puppet in others’ hands? Heaven give me strength to be forgetful of self, and strong in defence of my child!”
She pressed back her hair from her brow, which became full of lines, and, resting her elbows upon her knees, her chin upon her hands, she sat there gazing as it were into the future, as she told herself that her own sufferings must be as nought, but that she must save Julia from such a fate.
Sir Gordon? Bayle? No! no! Only as a last resource. Not even then; they must be left. They had known the truth from the first—she saw it now—and in pity for her had borne all she had said, and helped her.
No! to ask their aid was to punish her husband. That could not be. She must act alone, weak woman as she was. She must be strong now, and she and Julia must leave this man at once. They must take some cottage or lodging in the town, and work for a living. That must be the first step.
Then came the black cloud again, to shut out the hope. Hallam would not allow them to go; and if they could steal away they were absolutely penniless.
She sat gazing before her, feeling as if old age had come suddenly to freeze her faculties and render her helpless; but, starting from her blank sense of misery, she forced herself to think.
What should she do? Julia should not be a convict’s wife; she felt that she would rather see her dead.