Brightness and courage returned to the spirit of Sybil: a
sense of animating and exalting faith that could move
mountains, and combat without fear a thousand perils. The
conviction of celestial aid inspired her. She rose from her
sad resting-place and re-entered the house: only, however, to
provide herself with her walking attire, and then alone and
without a guide, the shades of evening already descending,
this child of innocence and divine thoughts, born in a cottage
and bred in a cloister, she went forth, on a great enterprise
of duty and devotion, into the busiest and the wildest haunts
of the greatest of modern cities.
Sybil knew well her way to Palace Yard. This point was soon
reached: she desired the cabman to drive her to a Street in
the Strand in which was a coffee-house, where during the last
weeks of their stay in London the scanty remnants of the
National Convention had held their sittings. It was by a mere
accident that Sybil had learnt this circumstance, for when she
had attended the meetings of the Convention in order to hear
her father's speeches, it was in the prime of their gathering
and when their numbers were great, and when they met in
audacious rivalry opposite that St Stephen's which they wished
to supersede.
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