I
have only been waiting my father's orders. If all be well with my sister
I shall go to the Manor Moat, and wait his commands quietly there. I am
home-sick for England."
"You have chosen an ill time for home-sickness, when a pestilence is
raging."
Argument could not touch the girl, whose mind was braced for battle. The
reverend mother ceded with as good a grace as she could assume, on the top
of a very arbitrary temper. An English priest was heard of who was about to
travel to London on his return to a noble friend and patron in the north of
England, in whose house he had lived before the troubles; and in this good
man's charge Angela was permitted to depart, on a long and weary journey
by way of Antwerp and the Scheldt. They were five days at sea, the voyage
lengthened by the almost unprecedented calm which had prevailed all that
fatal summer--a weary voyage in a small trading vessel, on board which
Angela had to suffer every hardship that a delicate woman can be subjected
to on board ship: a wretched berth in a floating cellar called a cabin,
want of fresh water, of female attendance, and of any food but the
coarsest. These deprivations she bore without a murmur. It was only the
slowness of the passage that troubled her.
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