But that soon came.

The final good-bye was said; the last link to Canada and Canadian life was broken.
They stood on deck and strained their eyes to watch the fast disappearing figure till it was gone, and they felt themselves alone.
Then the vessel began to move out of the harbour, and night seemed to come on all at once.
They went down together to their cabin, and seated themselves side by side in a desolate companionship.

After a minute Lucia put her arms tightly round her mother, and laying her head upon her shoulder, cried, not passionately, but with a complete abandonment of all self-restraint.
Mrs.Costello did not try to check those natural and restoring tears.
She soothed her child by fond motherly touches, kissed her cheek or smoothed her hair, but said not a word until the whole dull weight that had been pressing on her had melted away.

There was something strangely forlorn in their circumstances which both felt, and neither liked to speak of to the other.

Leaving behind all the friends, all the associations of so many years, they were going alone--a feeble and perhaps dying woman, and a young girl--into a strange world, where every face would be new, and even their own language would grow unfamiliar to their ears.