"Good girl! good wife!" said Hallam, in a low voice; and with some show of affection he kissed the quivering woman, who, as she clasped him to her heart and grew to him once more, saw nothing of the change, but closed her eyes mentally and really, the longing of years satisfied, everything forgotten, even the presence of Julia, in the great joy of being united once again. "There!" he said suddenly; "that must do now. There is only a short time, and I have lots to say, my gal." Millicent Hallam's eyes opened, and she quite started back from her love romance to reality, his words sounded so harsh, his language was so coarse and strange; but she smiled again directly, a happy, joyous smile, as nestling within her husband's left arm, she laid her cheek upon the coarse woollen convict garb, and clinging there sent with a flash from her humid eyes a loving invitation to her child. She did not speak, but her action was eloquent as words, and bade the trembling girl take the place she had half-vacated, the share she offered--the strong right arm, and the half of her husband's breast. Julia read and knew, and in an instant she too was clinging to the convict, looking piteously in his scarred, brutalised countenance, with eyes that strove so hard to be full of love, but which gazed through no medium of romance. Strive how she would, all seemed so hideously real-- this hard, coarse-looking, rough-voiced man was not the father she had been taught to reverence and love; and it was with a heart full of misery and despair that she gazed at him with her lips quivering, and then burst into a wild fit of sobbing as she buried her face in his breast. "There, there, don't cry," he said almost impatiently; and there was no working of the face, nothing to indicate that he was moved by the passionate love of his faithful wife, or the agony of the beautiful girl whose sobs shook his breast. "Time's precious now. Wait till I get out of this place. You go and sit down, Julie. By jingo!" he continued, with a look of admiration as he held her off at arm's length, "what a handsome gal you've grown! No sweetheart yet, I hope?" Julia shrank from him with scarlet face, and as he loosed her hand she shrank back to the rough seat, with her eyes troubled, and her hands trembling. "Now, Milly, my gal," said Hallam, drawing his wife's arm through his, and leading her beneath the window as he spoke in a low voice once more, "you have that case safe and unopened?" "Yes." "Then look here! Business. I must be rough and plain. You have brought me my freedom." "Robert!" Only that word, but so full of frantic joy. "Quiet, and listen. You will do exactly as I tell you?" "Yes. Can you doubt?" "No. Now look here. You will take a good house at once, the best you can. If you can't get one--they're very scarce--the hotel will do. Stay there, and behave as if you were well off--as you are." "Robert, I have nothing," she gasped.