“But you won’t get any sicker if I don’t cry, will you?” queried Mary, peering anxiously in her father’s face. “I did want to cry awful bad when mamma kissed me, and a heap of gullops came up in my throat, and I thought I’d never get ’em all down again. What makes gullops come up in my throat, papa? Do you have them?”
“Sometimes, dear child,” replied Andrew, smiling at Mary’s quaint question. “Where did you hear that expression?”
“Oh, from old Chloe, papa. Whenever any of the pickininys gets choked or anything, she always goes for them with her shoes, and cracks them on the back, and says: ‘Dere’s dat chile gullopin’ again. Some day he’ll snuffocate, suah.’”
Andrew laughed and kissed the bright winsome face of his child, while again he thought of Victoria’s wisdom in leaving to him her treasure. Ah, what watchful care would he take of her, so that when the right time should come, he might place her in Victoria’s arms and say: “This link, which has bound us, has not been broken, only unclasped. Take it, that once more may we be united.”
Meanwhile Victoria sat like a statue, her dry eyes looking out upon the bleak hills, and gray overcast sky, as the train sped swiftly on. To her excited fancy all nature mourned at her departure, and somehow the thought comforted her. If the sun had smiled, and the birds had sung, she could not have borne it. She had drained her cup of sorrow to the last dregs. One more drop, and she would have succumbed. She had a wild longing at the last moment to throw her arms around Andrew’s neck before all the crowd, and beg him to confess right there and then, so that she might not leave him, but stay and defy the world for his sake. Anything, however dreadful, was better than this separation, which seemed to be tearing her heart from her body; but she looked at Mary and forbore. “For her dear name,” she whispered, and then her face, wearing a smile, her heart burning like a volcano, she stepped aboard the car, and was borne away from those she loved so passionately to where stern duty awaited her.
Upon meeting the doctor and his companions she was the same self-possessed woman who had parted from Andrew. No tears, no mention of regrets. She fixed the pillows for Roger with a deft hand which did not shake or tremble. The doctor marveled as he watched her. “Made to endure,” he murmured, “made to endure.”
The party traveled leisurely until they reached New York, and after the doctor had placed them upon the best packet-ship bound for England, he turned his face toward home.
“Be good to my loved ones,” were Victoria’s parting words. “Make your home with Andrew. It will cheer him.”
“I will,” replied the doctor. “Keep a brave heart, Mrs. Willing. Remember the same God watches over us all.”
Upon reaching England Victoria sought a quiet villa in the suburbs of London, where she hoped to be free from prying eyes. She engaged two maid servants, who seemed to be quite steady, and not inclined to gossip; and a man of all work, deaf apparently to anything going on around him, but alert to every order given him by his mistress. A model English servant. Here Victoria lived in absolute retirement for nearly a year. She was not unhappy. The consciousness of having done her duty toward the poor imbecile—who now clung to her more tenaciously than he had ever done to Adam—served to sweeten her life. Then she did not forget the poor and unhappy beings who were all about her. Her health demanded exercise, and every day, rain or shine, she drove about the city. Usually she took Roger with her, for although he could not see, he delighted in the rapid motion of the carriage, and was never so quiet or tractable as when riding with his hand clasping Victoria’s.