“We couldn't have refused to come. That's what consoles me for being here this minute. I put on a bold face with Clara Atherton, yesterday morning at the depot; but I was in a cold chill, all the time. Our coming off, in this way, on such an errand, is something so different from the rest of our whole life! And I _do_ like quiet, and orderly ways, and all that we call respectability! I've been thinking that the trial will be reported by some such interviewing wretch as Bartley himself, and that we shall figure in the newspapers. But I've concluded that we mustn't care. It's right, and we must do it. I don't shut my eyes to the kind of people we're mixed up with. I pity Marcia, and I love her--poor, helpless, unguided thing!--but that old man _is_ terrible! He's as cruel as the grave where he thinks he's been wronged, and crueller where he thinks _she's_ been wronged. You've forgiven so much, Ben, that you can't understand a man who forgives nothing; but _I_ can, for I'm a pretty good hater, myself. And Marcia's just like her father, at times. I've seen her look at Clara Atherton as if she could kill her!” The little girl stirred in her berth, and then lifted herself on her hands, and stared round at them through her tangled golden hair. “Is it morning, yet?” she asked sleepily. “Is it to-morrow?” “Yes; it's to-morrow, Flavia,” said Olive. “Do you want to get up?” “And is next day the day after to-morrow?” “Yes.” “Then it's only one day till I shall see papa. That's what mamma said. Where is mamma?” asked the child, rising to her knees, and sweeping back her hair from her face with either hand. “I will go and send her to you,” said Halleck. At Pittsburg the Squire was eager for his breakfast, and made amends for his fast of the day before. He ate grossly of the heterogeneous abundance of the railroad restaurant, and drank two cups of coffee that in his thin, native air would have disordered his pulse for a week. But he resumed his journey with a tranquil strength that seemed the physical expression of a mind clear and content. He was willing and even anxious to tell Halleck what his theories and plans were; but the young man shrank from knowing them. He wished only to know whether Marcia were privy to them, and this, too, he shrank from knowing. XXXIX.