Sylvia's Lovers - Page 283/290

In this dilemma, the recollection of the old man's kindly speech and

offer of assistance, made, it is true, half in joke, at the end of

her wedding visit, came into her mind; and she resolved to go and

ask for some of the friendly counsel and assistance then offered.

It would be the first time of her going out since her mother's

funeral, and she dreaded the effort on that account. More even than

on that account did she shrink from going into the streets again.

She could not get over the impression that Kinraid must be lingering

near; and she distrusted herself so much that it was a positive

terror to think of meeting him again. She felt as though, if she but

caught a sight of him, the glitter of his uniform, or heard his

well-known voice in only a distant syllable of talk, her heart would

stop, and she should die from very fright of what would come next.

Or rather so she felt, and so she thought before she took her baby

in her arms, as Nancy gave it to her after putting on its

out-of-door attire.

With it in her arms she was protected, and the whole current of her

thoughts was changed. The infant was wailing and suffering with its

teething, and the mother's heart was so occupied in soothing and

consoling her moaning child, that the dangerous quay-side and the

bridge were passed almost before she was aware; nor did she notice

the eager curiosity and respectful attention of those she met who

recognized her even through the heavy veil which formed part of the

draping mourning provided for her by Hester and Coulson, in the

first unconscious days after her mother's death.

Though public opinion as yet reserved its verdict upon Philip's

disappearance--warned possibly by Kinraid's story against hasty

decisions and judgments in such times as those of war and general

disturbance--yet every one agreed that no more pitiful fate could

have befallen Philip's wife.

Marked out by her striking beauty as an object of admiring interest

even in those days when she sate in girlhood's smiling peace by her

mother at the Market Cross--her father had lost his life in a

popular cause, and ignominious as the manner of his death might be,

he was looked upon as a martyr to his zeal in avenging the wrongs of

his townsmen; Sylvia had married amongst them too, and her quiet

daily life was well known to them; and now her husband had been

carried off from her side just on the very day when she needed his

comfort most.

For the general opinion was that Philip had been 'carried off'--in

seaport towns such occurrences were not uncommon in those

days--either by land-crimps or water-crimps.

So Sylvia was treated with silent reverence, as one sorely

afflicted, by all the unheeded people she met in her faltering walk

to Jeremiah Foster's.