He needed solicitude and solace: and Sybil
resolved that if vigilance and sympathy could soothe an
existence that would otherwise be embittered, these guardian
angels should at least hover over the life of her father.
When the term of his imprisonment had ceased, Gerard had
returned with his daughter to Mowbray. Had he deigned to
accept the offers of his friends, he need not have been
anxious as to his future. A public subscription for his
service had been collected: Morley, who was well to do in the
world, for the circulation of the Mowbray Phalanx daily
increased with the increasing sufferings of the people,
offered his friend to share his house and purse: Hatton was
munificent; there was no limit either to his offers or his
proffered services. But all were declined; Gerard would live
by labour. The post he had occupied at Mr Trafford's was not
vacant even if that gentleman had thought fit again to receive
him; but his reputation as a first-rate artizan soon obtained
him good employment, though on this occasion in the town of
Mowbray, which for the sake of his daughter he regretted. He
had no pleasant home now for Sybil, but he had the prospect of
one, and until he obtained possession of it, Sybil sought a
refuge, which had been offered to her from the first, with her
kindest and dearest friend; so that at this period of our
history, she was again an inmate of the convent at Mowbray,
whither her father and Morley had attended her the eve of the
day she had first visited the ruins of Marney Abbey.
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