The town clock struck two.
The parlour of the convent would not open until morning, and surely a delay would annoy Madame; so, in spite of her desire to see the other child, she went home.

The maids of the inn were just arising when she reached Pont-l'Eveque.
So the poor boy would be on the ocean for months! His previous trips had not alarmed her.

One can come back from England and Brittany; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost in an uncertain region at the very end of the world.
From that time on, Felicite thought solely of her nephew.

On warm days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed, she was afraid he would be struck by lightning.

When she harkened to the wind that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body bent backward and covered with sea-foam; or,--these were recollections of the engraved geography--he was being devoured by savages, or captured in a forest by apes, or dying on some lonely coast.