The unhappy woman did not even think that she possessed the right to send the offensive persons at any moment from her presence; for, since the discovery of her secret, Mabel no longer felt that she was the mistress of these people, or that she held a power of command anywhere. All that she wished was to hide herself from every one. Influenced only by this unconquerable desire, she hurried up the stairs, and taking a bronze lamp from a statue that occupied a niche in the first landing, went forward till she came to the door of a chamber that had been occupied by James Harrington. Here a gleam of intelligence shot over her pale face, and she eagerly tried the lock. It yielded, and, drawing a quick breath, she crossed the threshold, turning the key which had been left inside with an impatient violence, and looked round exultingly at the solitude which she had thus insured.
"It was here," she said, looking around on the grate and on the table, while her pale brow darkened and her lips began to tremble; "it was here that he burned my poor journal—here that he tore the secret from my soul, while I lay sleeping below. After this cruel pillage of my life, he fled to hide the——No, no! Scorn he could not feel—hate, pity, anything but scorn! Let me search if any vestige remains."
She bent over the empty grate, peering through the polished bars with keen glances, but it was bare and cold; not an ember remained, nor a grain of dust. The very ashes of her book had been cast forth with the common refuse. The table was empty, not a paper littered it: a bronze standish, in which the ink was frozen to a black ice and a useless pen or two, alone met her search; all was in cruel order. The bed, with its unpressed pillows smooth as iced snow—the easy-chair wheeled into a corner of the room—the closed shutters without—everything was desolate.
Mabel sat down upon the bed, the most dreary thing there; she looked mournfully around. The wild eagerness died out of her features, and lowering her face upon the cold pillow, she began to cry like a child. Directly the chill of the night struck through and through her. She shivered till the teeth chattered beneath her quivering lips; what with grief, cold, and exhaustion, the poor lady had become helpless as infancy. Forgetting where she was, and careless of everything on earth, she gathered the bed-clothes slowly around her, and shuddered herself to sleep.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
THE UNEXPECTED RETURN.
As General Harrington was dining at his club that day, a note was sent up to him; and, as his meal had reached the last stage of a luxurious dessert, he quietly broke open the envelope, and read:
"James Harrington has found means to see Lina, and she has told him everything. I shall await you here during the next hour.
Zillah."
The General crushed this note slowly in his hand, a quiet smile stole over his face, and sipping his wine with great complacency, he murmured: