Jonas came over and sought an interview with Cynthy Ann. He
had not been to see her since his unsuccessful courtship. Julia felt
that he was the bearer of a message. But Mrs. Anderson was in one of her
most exacting humors, and it gave her not a little pleasure to keep
Cynthy Ann, on one pretext and another, all the evening at her side. Had
Cynthy Ann been less submissive and scrupulous, she might have broken
away from this restraint, but in truth she was censuring herself for
having any backsliding, rebellious wish to talk with Jonas after she had
imagined the idol cast out of her heart entirely. Her conscience was a
tank-master not less grievous than Mrs. Anderson, and, between the two,
Jonas had to go away without leaving his message. And Julia had to keep
her breaking heart in suspense a while longer.

Why did she not elope long ago and get rid of her mother? Because she
was Julia, and being Julia, conscientious, true, and filial in spite of
her unhappy life, her own character built a wall against such a
disobedience. Nearly all limitations are inside. You could do almost
anything if you could give yourself up to it. To go in the teeth of
one's family is the one thing that a person of Julia's character and
habits finds next to impossible. A beneficent limitation of nature; for
the cases in which the judgment of a girl of eighteen is better than
that of her parents are very few. Besides, the inevitable
"heart-disease" was a specter that guarded the gates of Julia's prison.
Night after night she sat looking out over the hills sleeping in hazy
darkness, toward the hollow in which stood the castle; night after night
she had half-formed the purpose of visiting August, and then the
life-long habit of obedience and a certain sense of delicacy held her
back. But on this night, after the consultation, she felt that she would
see him if her seeing him brought down the heavens.

It was a very dark night. She sat waiting for hours--very long hours
they seemed to her--and then, at midnight, she began to get ready
to start.

Only those who have taken such a step can understand the pain of
deciding, the agony of misgivings in the execution, the trembling that
Julia felt when she turned the brass knob on the front door and lifted
the latch--lifted the latch slowly and cautiously, for it was near the
door of her mother's room--and then crept out like a guilty thing into
the dark dampness of the night, groping her way to the gate,