n owner of the half-crown had appointed to call for it again
at William Darley's. She had schooled herself to believe that time
and patience would serve her best. Her plan was to obtain all the
knowledge about Philip that she could in the first instance; and
then, if circumstances allowed it, as in all probability they would,
to let drop by drop of healing, peacemaking words and thoughts fall
on Sylvia's obdurate, unforgiving heart. So Hester put on her
things, and went out down towards the old quay-side on that evening
after the shop was closed.

Poor little Sylvia! She was unforgiving, but not obdurate to the full
extent of what Hester believed. Many a time since Philip went away
had she unconsciously missed his protecting love; when folks spoke
shortly to her, when Alice scolded her as one of the non-elect, when
Hester's gentle gravity had something of severity in it; when her
own heart failed her as to whether her mother would have judged that
she had done well, could that mother have known all, as possibly she
did by this time. Philip had never spoken otherwise than tenderly to
her during the eighteen months of their married life, except on the
two occasions before recorded: once when she referred to her dream
of Kinraid's possible return, and once again on the evening of the
day before her discovery of his concealment of the secret of
Kinraid's involuntary disappearance.

After she had learnt that Kinraid was married, her heart had still
more strongly turned to Philip; she thought that he had judged
rightly in what he had given as the excuse for his double dealing;
she was even more indignant at Kinraid's fickleness than she had any
reason to be; and she began to learn the value of such enduring love
as Philip's had been--lasting ever since the days when she first
began to fancy what a man's love for a woman should be, when she had
first shrunk from the tone of tenderness he put into his especial
term for her, a girl of twelve--'Little lassie,' as he was wont to
call her.

But across all this relenting came the shadow of her vow--like the
chill of a great cloud passing over a sunny plain. How should she
decide? what would be her duty, if he came again, and once more
called her 'wife'? She shrank from such a possibility with all the
weakness and superstition of her nature; and this it was which made
her strengthen herself with the re-utterance of unforgiving words;
and shun all recurrence to the subject on the