The train was running along the western coast; the sun was setting; the Irish mountains were purple against the red glow of the sky behind them.
"And then think of the poor soul herself! It may be best for her too! God knows to what depths she might have descended!"
Stowell wanted to burst out on the Bishop, but a secret voice within him whispered, "Hold your tongue! Say nothing!"
"All the same, I'm sorry for the poor creature, and only yesterday I was using my influence to get her into a Refuge Home for Fallen Women across the water."
The train drew up at the station for Bishop's Court, and the Bishop, after a cheerful adieu, hopped like a bird along the platform to where his carriage stood waiting for him, with its two high-stepping horses and its coachman in livery.
Stowell's heart was afire.
"Refuge Home! Send some of your fashionable women to your Refuge Homes! Holy Wedlock! There are more fallen women inside your Holy Wedlock than outside of it!"
At the station for the glen Stowell got out himself, and there he saw a different spectacle—an elderly woman in a satin mantle, surrounded by a group of other elderly women in faded sun-bonnets.
It was Mrs. Collister again. In one hand she held her blackthorn stick, and in the other she carried a small bundle in a print handkerchief—probably containing her underclothing.
Stowell understood. The news about Bessie had reached her home, and the heart-broken (almost brain-broken) old mother was waiting for the south-going train to Castletown.