This vow upon her knees had quieted Margaret Cranstoun’s heart, for she only now awaited Roundsman Dan Daly’s coming triumph to summon Senator Alynton.
Once the document was honorably out of her hands, then the Queen of the Street could abdicate, and go “far from the madding crowd,” where “beyond their voices there is peace.” The hour of loathing her excited environment had come at last.
It seemed as if some subtle commune of spirit had brought the long-estranged husband and wife together in spirit on this very evening, for Margaret Cranstoun dreamed of the loyal husband of her youth, when she fell asleep, murmuring “Lead, kindly Light.” There were angels pleading with them both—angels of white, unfolded wings. For the child’s sake, they pleaded for a hearing.
And the next morning she was shaken at heart, as the gusty pines are thrilled by the wild winds of night, when she read the long appeal wrung from Arnold Cranstoun’s heart by the hours of his lonely midnight agony. His agony had overmastered the proud spirit at last.
The deserted wife’s tears fell on the blotted pages over which the strong man had leaned in all the ecstasy of a last appeal.
He knew that there would be an answer, for his messenger was bidden to return.
And all that day, James Garston waited, while his estranged wife trembled at the voice of her own heart, and bowed her head over her daughter’s picture in an agony of speechless love. She dared all for herself, but only to save the child of her hungry heart.
She feared the fatal sentence of these awful words of Holy Writ: “For the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the heads of the children.” That thought brought her to her knees now, and she walked alone in the dark valley of silent sorrows.
Brought to bay by the wild appeal, the excited woman realized that she dare not confer with either Alynton, Endicott or Conyers. The still unsoiled woman-heart revolted at the unveiling of all the sorrows of a shadowed life—those secret sorrows which had haunted her in all the gilded scenes of a strange prosperity, her burden carried under the veil of secrecy—her galling chain of secret sorrows.
“For the child’s sake!” she murmured, as she vainly essayed to answer her recreant husband’s proposals.