Vanderpoel travelled down from London, and, during her journey, scarcely
saw the wintry hedges and bare trees, because, as she sat in her
cushioned corner of the railway carriage, she was inwardly offering up
gentle, pathetically ardent prayers of gratitude. She was the woman who
prays, and the many sad petitions of the past years were being answered
at last. She was being allowed to go to Rosy--whatsoever happened, she
could never be really parted from her girl again. She asked pardon many
times because she had not been able to be really sorry when she had
heard of her son-in-law's desperate condition. She could feel pity for
him in his awful case, she told herself, but she could not wish for the
thing which perhaps she ought to wish for. She had confided this to her
husband with innocent, penitent tears, and he had stroked her cheek,
which had always been his comforting way since they had been young
things together.
"My dear," he said, "if a tiger with hydrophobia were loose among a lot
of decent people--or indecent ones, for the matter of that--you would
not feel it your duty to be very sorry if, in springing on a group of
them, he impaled himself on an iron fence. Don't reproach yourself too
much.
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