She did not wish to bathe her sorrowing face in the fount of her own tears, but in the fount of his, and she greedily drank in every word and allusion, making each the text which she mentally expanded in the silence of the night, till she seemed to be reading the complete history of her husband's life for the past twelve years. Certainly he hoped she was quite well, and that little Julie was the same. He supposed she would be so grown that he should hardly know her again, but he hoped she would not have forgotten him. He made but little allusion to his sentence. And here perhaps Millicent Hallam felt a little disappointed, for he dealt in no severe strictures against those who had caused his punishment, neither did he reiterate his innocency. He merely said that he supposed Australia would always be his home now; and that she was to part with everything she possessed, take passage in the first ship with Julie, and come and join him at once--he would explain their future when she came. No word about the old people either; or the repugnance wife and child might feel to leaving home to go to a strange land to join a convict father--not a word of this, for they were his wife and child. He wanted them, and he bade them come. Millicent Hallam knew that the letter was selfish in the extreme, but it was the kind of selfishness that elated her, and filled her with joy. He was innocent; he had suffered in silence a very martyrdom, all these years; but she was still the one woman in the world to him, and he had turned to her to bid her come and chase away his cares. Blindly infatuated, strong, and yet weak as a girl; foolish in her trust in an utterly heartless and selfish, scoundrel; but how loving! Her young heart had opened like a flower at the breath of his love. He had been the sun that had warmed it with that wondrous new life, and it wanted something far stronger than occasional harshness, neglect, or the charges of man against man, to tear out the belief that had fast rooted itself in Millicent Hallam's nature. Blame--pity--what you will, and then thank God that in spite of modern society ways, follies of fashion, errors of education, weakness, vanity, and the hundred biassing influences, the world abounds with such loving, trusting women, always has done so, and always will to the very end. One great joy that seemed to take ten years from her life as she read and re-read that letter to herself, and to Julie, who became infected by her mother's enthusiasm, and at last believed that she was gladdened by the news, and sobbed in secret, she knew not why, as she thought of the time of parting. But there was that one portion of the letter separated by two broad lines, ruled evidently with the pen drawn along the side of an old book, the rough edges showing where the point of a spluttering quill pen dipped in coarse ink had followed each irregularity.