The bravest of the villagers at the foot of Vesuvius never dreamed of stopping the crater's mouth.
But, happily, at last Mrs.Anderson's insane wrath went a little too far.
"You poor lost sinner," she said, "to think you should go to destruction under my very eyes, disgracing us all, by running over the country at night with bad men! But there's mercy even for such as you." Julia would not have understood the full meaning of this aspersion of her purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye.

His expression, half sneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying its full interpretation.

She put out her hand.

She turned white, and said: "Say one word more, and I will go away from you and never come back! Never!" And then she sat down and cried, and then Mrs.Anderson's maternal love, her "unloving love," revived.

To have her daughter leave her, too, would be a sort of defeat.