“Have I been delirious?” she said at last.
“Yes, dear; but last night you slept so peacefully, and all through to-day. There, let me call Thisbe.”
“No, not yet,” said Mrs Hallam, clinging to her child’s arm, as a great anxiety was longing to be satisfied. “Tell me, Julia, did I talk—talk of anything while I was like that?”
Julia nodded quickly, and the despairing look deepened in her eyes.
“Not—not of your father, my child?” panted the suffering woman.
“Yes, mother, dear mother,” sobbed Julia, with a passionate cry that she could not withhold, and she buried her face in the sick woman’s breast.
The sun sank lower, and Julia’s low sobs grew more rare, but she did not rise from her knees—she did not lift her tear-stained face, while clasped about her neck, and her fingers joined above the glossy head, as if in prayer, Mrs Hallam’s hands, thin and transparent from her illness, seemed bathed in the orange glow of the sweet, calm eve.
All was still and restful on the hill-slope above the beautiful Paramatta River, and from the window there was a scene of peace that seemed to hinder the possibility of trouble existing on this earth.
“Julia,” said Mrs Hallam at length; “have you thought of all this—since—since I have been lying here?”
“Yes, dear, till I could think no more.”