“You would ask for forgiveness, I see,” said her father, laying his hand on her shoulder. “Your sister forgives you, as she is in the hourly habit of doing; and so do I. Do not be in too great a hurry to forgive yourself.”
Anna was in despair as he left the room; but before he returned, she had apparently lost all remembrance of his rebuke and of its cause.
CHAPTER IX.
The Convent.
It was Mr. Byerley’s wish to avoid Paris on his way into Touraine, as it had been agreed with the Fletchers that they should spend three months there together, on their return to England. Mr. Byerley therefore took a passage in a Rochelle packet, for himself, his daughters, and their maid, whom they could not resolve to leave behind. Mr. Byerley had political friends in every country, and especially many in France, who were discontented with the government, as most sensible and upright men at that time were. They were not engaged in any plots or underhand doings, but were glad to cultivate a correspondence with the friends of freedom, and to learn every thing which such men as Mr. Byerley could communicate respecting the best institutions of a more favoured country. With some of these friends Mr. Byerley had planned a meeting; and his dislike of leaving his own country was softened by the hope of doing something abroad to forward his favourite objects. His daughters were aware of this, and would have dreaded the political discussions which they knew must take place, if they had not hoped to find a refuge with Mrs. Fletcher and her daughters, from company which at home they could not have escaped. It was not till their father took out the packet of letters with which he was charged, while sitting on deck, the day they sailed, that the girls were aware how numerous were his connexions abroad.
“If you were sinking, papa, which would you try hardest to save, me or those letters?” said Anna, laughing.
“If I could burn the letters first, I would save you, my dear; but I should not like the risk of their floating.”
“Then I wish they were at the bottom of the sea,” said Mary. “I am afraid of them.”
“There is no occasion, Mary. There is nothing in them that I should hesitate to show you; but they are too good to fall into hands which might do harm to the writers. There is no treason, privy conspiracy, or rebellion in them: nothing more than an Englishman may write and put in the newspaper any day if he chooses.”
Mary was satisfied.
The voyage was very pleasant to all the party but Susan, who was the only one who suffered much from sickness. There were no cabin-passengers but two or three French merchants, who, being known to each other, readily took the hint given by Mr. Byerley’s somewhat unsociable manners, that he wished for no other intercourse than that of his daughters. The girls had seen so little of their father during their late bustling life, that they enjoyed the present opportunity of being always together. They had never before been at sea, and no minds could be better prepared to feel the delicious pleasures of the first short, favourable voyage. All day they were on deck, talking, singing—sometimes reading, but suffering no new object to pass unnoticed. Late at night, they were still leaning over the vessel’s side, no longer singing, for fear of disturbing those who were gone to rest, but talking in low voices of things high and deep, far and near. When the moon shone, they traced her silvery path over the billows: when obscured, they looked with awe on the tossing surface round them, and felt their solitude on the watery waste. In a very short time, Anna’s imagination, which had received a new direction from the new scene in which she was placed, returned to its accustomed trains of images, and she saw little and heard nothing of what passed near her; while Mary, who (whatever Anna might think) possessed the same faculty in much greater strength and perfection, learned and experienced something new every hour. There was not a passing cloud in the sky, or a purple shadow on the waters, not a drifting weed or a sprinkling of foam which escaped her glance, or failed to awaken some thought or feeling. She was the first to mark the rising star, and to understand the intimation that some far-distant beacon might be discerned. Yet she never forgot the pleasure of others while experiencing her own. When Anna raised her head and saw how her sister pointed out to Susan such objects as she could understand, she owned it was very well for poor Susan that somebody tried to amuse her, but wondered how it was possible under such a moon, amidst such a scene, to let down the tone of feeling so far as to talk with a servant. The cabin was surely the place to talk to Susan. She forgot how