"A man who has been in prison!" and Mrs. Wrexford shuddered at the thought. She had seen and helped so many poor victims of the cruel laws, and the memory of their drawn faces and evil eyes, and coarse speech, flashed across her mind. She could not reconcile one coming into her little home.
Angela answered her:
"Yes, he has been in prison, but the shame was for his persecutors—not for him. Still, if you would rather I saw him somewhere else—"
"Oh no, my dear child. If you wish it—"
"I do. I just want to see him again, as he writes he does me. I want to hear him speak again. I want to wish him 'God-speed' on his journey."
"Very, well, Angela," said the old lady. "As you wish."
A week afterwards O'Connell arrived in London. They met in Mrs. Wrexford's little drawing-room in Mayfair.
They looked at each other for some moments without speaking. Both noted the fresh lines of suffering in each other's faces. They had been through the long valley of the shadow of sorrow since they had last met. But O'Connell thought, as he looked at her, that all the suffering he had gone through passed from him as some hideous dream. It was worth it—these months of torture—just to be looking at her now. Worth the long black nights—the labours in the heat of the day, with life's outcasts around him; the taunts of his gaolers: worth all the infamy of it—just to stand there looking at her.
She had taken his life in her two little hands.
He had bathed his soul all these months in the thought of her. He had prayed night and day that he might see her standing near him just as she was then: see the droop of her eye and the silk of her hair and feel the touch of her hand and hear the exquisite tenderness of her voice.