“Can she do nothing with her father?”
“Nothing. She failed in England when this delusion first fell upon him.”
“Did she know what it meant for her and him?”
“Hardly. She even fancied that they would be happier in America than at home, where she saw that his old grandeur was always reproaching him.”
“Did he conceal from her the goal and object of his emigration?”
“She knew he was, or supposed himself to be, a Mormon. But Mormonism was little more than a name to her. She believed his perversion only a transitory folly. It is but recently, only since they were away from succor, off in the desert, that she has perceived her own risk. She hoped that the voyage from England would disenchant her father, and that she could keep him in the States. No; he was committed; he was impracticable. You have seen yourself how far his faith is shaken. Just so far that his crazy cheerfulness has given place to moping; but he will hear nothing of reason.”
“What does she anticipate?”
“She says she only dares to endure. Day by day they both wear away. Day by day her father’s bright hope dwindles away. Day by day she perceives the moment of her own danger approaching. She could not speak to me of it; but I could feel by her tone her disgust and disdain of Sizzum. O, how steady and noble she is! All for her father! All to guide him with the fewest pangs to that desolate death she knows must come! She gave me a few touches of their past history, so that I could see how much closer and tenderer than the common bond of parent and child theirs had been.”
“That I saw, from the old gentleman’s story. Sorrow and poverty ennoble love.”
“She thanked me and you so sweetly for our society, and the kind words we had given them. She had not seen her father so cheerful, so like himself, since they had left England.”